A couple of days ago, this Perodua Myvi driver crashed into a police station in Ketereh, Kelantan. The driver was an elderly woman and the incident occurred around 10 in the morning.
A retired army veteran suffered a broken nose and injured his face as well.
The incident was blamed on pedal mis-operation. Apparently the driver hit the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal and collided into another vehicle before veering off into the police station. Interestingly, the new full-spec Myvi’s Advanced Safety Assist (ASA) system may have prevented an incident like this. It’s unclear how fast the driver was going when this incident occurred, but it was apparently fast enough to trigger the airbags.
ASA works between 4 and 30 km/h. It uses stereo cameras that can recognise other vehicles in front of it. Pre-Collision Warning would have alerted the driver that she was coming up to quickly to the car in front, but that may not have helped. The next stage, Pre-Collision Braking may have mitigated the incident by first weakly engaging the brakes and then fully engaging them to bring the vehicle to a stop. Even if the car still ended up knocking into the other vehicle, its velocity would have been reduced and it probably would not have ended up finally crashing in to the police station.
A decade ago, stability control was looked at as a game changing safety feature that prevented loss of control at higher speeds. Road safety in this decade is probably going to be defined by the adoption of Advanced Driver Assist Systems like ASA in modern Perodua vehicles. Even if they prevent just one incident, they’ve paid for themselves.
