#HighwaySafety

If you’re planning to drive between the Netherlands and Germany tomorrow, just know that self-aware trucks will be out there.

Convoys of automated transport trucks will be plying the highways between Stuttgart and Rotterdam as part of the European Truck Platooning Challenge, an initiative created by the Netherlands to develop and showcase connected vehicle technology.

Drivers afraid to be behind the wheel are a misunderstood threat to road safety. Fearful driving often leads to excessive caution masquerading as politeness. Resulting behaviors may appear benign, when in fact they can be grave.

The author of the most famous — and controversial — book ever penned about the automotive industry turns 82 today.

Automobile safety crusader Ralph Nader probably wouldn’t have made it to this ripe old age if the industry hadn’t made design changes and undergone cultural reforms in the wake of his scathing 1965 publication “Unsafe at Any Speed.”

That book, which laid bare design flaws and the general lack of regard for safety during the then-Big Three’s heyday, ultimately sunk the innovative ‘swing axle’ Chevrolet Corvair — or as Nader called it, “The One-Car Accident.”

Aside from funding issues with the U.S. Highway Trust Fund, state governments are having a difficult time applying — and receiving — federal grants to make their part of the system safer.