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KASTELLAUN, Germany – TRW Automotive finds itself in an awkward position as its auto maker customers contemplate ways to let consumers access the Internet, email and vast entertainment options while driving.
TRW is a $14.4 billion supplier dedicated to airbags, seatbelts, brakes and other safety technologies, which is precisely why the Livonia, MI-based company takes a dim view of drivers who use cell phones or send text messages while they are behind the wheel.
So even though many of its customers are trying to develop safe ways for drivers to stay connected, a top executive at TRW says he’d rather see the industry discouraging these driver behaviors altogether because they are proven to cause accidents.
“Our intention is to keep all these things outside the car, at least on our side,” Alois Seewald, TRW’s global director-research and development, tells WardsAuto during a media event dedicated to safety technologies at the supplier’s test track here.
Instead, Seewald supports automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning and other technologies designed to “take stress away from the driver in today’s traffic situations and not overload him with emails and all these things. These are some kind of poison for the driver. This will not help.”
While many suppliers are developing their own methods of offering consumers various means of staying connected while driving, Seewald says TRW will not be one of them.
“TRW stands for safety. We don’t (produce) mobile phones; we don’t make things for distraction. This is not our business. For us, it should be the intention to add as much safety to our products as possible.”
The European Union agrees with this goal. Fatal car accidents in Europe fell from 59,000 in 1995 to 34,000 in 2009. The EU’s target is to cut that figure in half, and it is working on mandates for a number of safety technologies, including electronic stability control, a TRW staple, for all new vehicles in 2013.
