Intelligent electronic systems in commercial vehicles for enhanced trafficsafety

\Looking at the future trends of the road traffic, one will recognize that the commercial vehicle participation will not decrease, although it is requ ired from the environmental and social viewpoints. The reason is that the o ther means of freight transport (water, railway, air) do not provide the sa me flexibility as the road transport, and direct business interest of those companies, who are using this transport form is larger than the eventual l oss 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 he avy vehicles. These systems, which are named generally as "intelligent chas sis systems'', electronically control the operation of the chassis subsyste ms (engine, transmission, brake, suspension) and co-ordinate their operatio n on a higher level (vehicle controller, intelligent control systems, such as adaptive cruise control, video camera based lane change recognition syst em, etc.). This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the commercial vehicl e chassis systems, and tries to project their future development.