The South Korean company, Samsung has announced that it will begin supplying its “Safety Truck” worldwide after four months of reliability testing. While the tech company showed off the first commercial version of the vehicle to the public at a recent press event in La Plata, Argentina, the idea was conceptualised and revealed by Samsung in a blog post last year. In order to assist drivers while attempting to overtake, the company has come up with a neat “video wall” that live-feeds the view ahead of the truck for cars behind. A huge panel that is made of 4 TVs is installed on the back of trucks, so that the drivers behind can see what’s in front of the large vehicle and making it a lot safer for them to pass. “Another advantage of the Safety Truck is that it may reduce the risk of accidents caused by sudden braking or animals crossing the road,” the company said in its blog post. The IP56-certified signage are water- and dust-proof and were designed to maintain visual quality even under strong sunlight. They were developed by Samsung’s enterprise team under its Visual Display division, which supervises the development of all non-mobile gadgets with a display panel.
US advertising firm Leo Burnett, truck-trailer company Helvetica, system integrator Ingematica, and car giant Volvo participated in the project said Samsung. At a later date, the Safety Truck concept may be used together with truck platooning — where two trucks can automatically control the distance between them on the road using wireless networks, added the company. “We are trying to make a better world with innovation in technology,” said Lee Sang-jik, head of Samsung Argentina in a statement. “We hope traffic collision declines as more and more trucks use Samsung’s signage technology.” While the system is very interesting and the display has even a night mode to help drivers see at night, there are other questions that should be raised too. The most important question is possibly how bad weather will impact the visibility and how users would react to the brightness of the screens at night. Samsung that has a team of experienced engineers, technicians and all sorts of qualified professionals will of course work on these and other questions. The test program took place in Argentina, a place where almost one person dies in a traffic accident every hour, and most of them are due to cars trying to pass trucks on the tight roads of the country. Currently, this test is a pilot program, even though Samsung has every intention of expanding the Safety Truck concept throughout the rest of Argentina, with another target of releasing it globally in four months’ time.
