Road Trains: Genius or guaranteed pile-up?

Roads Trains: Motorway madness?

The European Union has financed a study to look at how grouping vehicles into 'platoons' or 'road trains' on the continent's motorways could cut fuel consumption, journey times and congestion.

The quite-frankly bizarre idea sees groups of cars linked together via wireless sensors, with a lead vehicle (driven by a 'professional driver' - whatever that means) leading the train. The 'lead driver' would monitor the status of the road train, allowing those in the other vehicles to sit back, sleep or read a book whilst they travel along motorways.

The EU's study will be entirely focused on the system working with wireless sensors and up to eight vehicles ranging from your everyday family cars to buses and trains. In theory, these vehicles could be mixed and matched in a 'road train', but I'm not sure I'd want to be in between a truck and a bus with no control.

The preliminary report picked up by the BBC says that 'road trains' could cut fuel levels by up to 20 percent presumably due to most vehicles being in the lead's slipstream.

1. The driver's sat-nav indicates that there is a road train ahead that is following some of his/her planned journey.

2. The driver approaches the road train, which is controlled by a professional driver at the front, and indicates that he/she wishes to join.

3. The road train takes control of the extra car, pulling it close to cut air drag and save about 20% in fuel consumption.

4. The drivers can relax until they wish to leave the road train, at which point they signal their intention to the driver at the front.

5. A bigger gap will be made to allow the car to leave and control of the vehicle will be returned to that driver.

All aboard

Funded under the European Commission's Framework 7 research plan, Sartre (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) will be aimed at long distance commuters who have to drive down motorways every day, but it is hoped the scheme will see the inclusion of trucks and other larger vehicles.

"The goal is to try and introduce a step change in transport methods. We're looking at what it would take to get platooning on public highways without making big changes to the public highways themselves. Each of the vehicles will have their own control and software monitoring system.

"There may well be a platoon sensor envelope that collates information and presents it to the lead vehicle so it can understand what is happening around all the vehicles," explains Tom Robinson, who is the coordinator of the new project, and also an expert at the engineering firm Ricardo.

It is hoped this technology will allow cars to join and leave 'trains' as they need. Mr Robinson speculated to the BBC that those joining a platoon or road train may one day pay for the privilege of someone else effectively driving them closer to their destination.

The Satre project is set to run for three years and Mr Robinson indicated that there will be a lot of behavioural elements to work out - such as whether all the vehicles will need to have their hazard lights on while in a platoon.

Personally, this writer thinks that is a good idea, so I can steer clear off these things. All I can think about is what happens when these wireless sensors fail and you have a driver taking a nap whilst his car careers down the motorway without anyone controlling it.

Either way, test trials are set to begin in the UK, Spain and Sweden on tracks with public road trials beginning in Spain.

Road Train images from The BBC

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