TRW Aftermarket has declared its 2015 ‘Safety Days’ at the Nurburgring, Germany a huge success. Now in its third year, the three day customer events coincide with the annual VLN Endurance Championships to highlight TRW Aftermarket’s commitment towards improving global road and pedestrian safety.
Bahar Sabet, TRW’s Marketing Communications Manager Parts & Service, Europe, explained: “In our position as the leading supplier of Corner Module parts and systems, we take every opportunity to champion global road and automotive part safety.
“The quality and calibre of the components fitted to vehicles play a huge part in keeping road users safe. As well as showcasing the very latest technologies, TRW Aftermarket’s safety events highlight the benefits of driving a vehicle equipped with OE components, the importance of regular testing by qualified technicians and the dangers of driving with deficient parts.”
This year, a total of 225 customers and press from across ten key European territories attended the events. PMM was lucky enough to attend one of the events, read our report in November’s issue of the magazine.
TRW Aftermarket customer Frank Schmitz of Autocentre Lindenberg, commented: “This was an interesting, informative and fun packed visit which served a very serious purpose: to see first-hand the effects of driving with defective or badly maintained components. Thank you to all involved.”
After touring TRW Aftermarket’s manufacturing facility, practical safety training exercises took place, simulating real life conditions to highlight potentially dangerous driving situations. These included braking in an emergency situation while cornering and the effects of driving with defective shock absorbers.
TRW Aftermarket has long campaigned for the shock absorber to be reclassified as ‘safety critical’ because research shows that one in four vehicles across Europe has at least one defective part, increasing braking distance and putting lives at risk on the roads. Further supporting this, the business the second phase of TRW Aftermarket’s ‘True Originals’ campaign, featuring shock absorbers, is now live.
Event attendees were able to practice their driving and gain an understanding of the latest automotive technologies at the Auto Motor and Sport Driving Safety Centre. In addition, they witnessed more than 190 vehicles compete for four hours on the grid on Race Day and experienced the famous ‘Nordschleife’ or ‘Green Hell Legend’ racing track as the passenger of a veteran driving instructor.
Bahar continued: “As a global leader, we take the responsibility of communicating the safety message to the widest audience extremely seriously. There’s always a great deal going on behind the scenes that we as road users aren’t aware of.
“By explaining the latest innovations and developments to our customers and industry press, these annual Safety Events go a long way towards communicating key messages which can help save lives.”
In its new Report the World Health Organisation (WHO) warns that global road deaths have plateaued at 1.25 million per year and that more action is urgently needed to meet the UN’s new target to halve this figure by 2020.
Along with other leading names, ZF TRW, is involved with ‘#stopthecrash’ a new global partnership led by NCAP which promotes life-saving crash avoidance technologies, specifically: Electronic Stability Control (ESC); Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) and Anti-Lock Brakes for Motorcycles (ABS)
Today’s crash avoidance technologies are capable of preventing many types of vehicle collision before they happen. For example, worldwide studies have confirmed the effectiveness of Electronic Stability Control (ESC) in reducing fatalities in single vehicle crashes by as much as 40%.
“Intelligent active and passive safety technologies are available to make vehicles safer, though we need to work hard to make them accessible to all,” Bahar added.
“However, at the same time, the global car parc is growing at pace meaning more and more vehicles on the world’s roads at any one time. As an industry, we need to work together to do what we can to protect all road users.”
