Intelligent Electronic Systems in Commercial Vehicles for Enhanced Traffic Safety

Looking at the future trends of the road traffic, one will recognize that the commercial vehicle participation will not decrease, although it is required from the environmental and social viewpoints. The reason is that the other means of freight transport (water, railway, air) do not provide the same flexibility as the road transport, and direct business interest of those companies, who are using this transport form is larger than the eventual loss caused by the penalties to be paid (taxes, compensation of higher axle load). This conflict is hard to solve, but the effect can be minimized. The commercial vehicle industry attempts to introduce systems to the vehicles, which are targeting on reduction of the environmental impacts caused by heavy vehicles. These systems, which are named generally as “intelligent chassis systems”, electronically control the operation of the chassis subsystems (engine, transmission, brake, suspension) and co-ordinate their operation on a higher level (vehicle controller, intelligent control systems, such as adaptive cruise control, video camera based lane change recognition system, etc.). This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the commercial vehicle chassis systems, and tries to project their future development.