"I remember the first winter - I was doing doughnuts in parking lots" for practice, recalled the associate professor at the University at Buffalo. "The first time driving on snow is a little scary."

Especially that moment when you feel the car glide off in a direction of its own. Now, helping drivers avoid those stomach-clenching moments is the focus of one of Singh's research projects at UB.

Using a driving simulator - powered by a Silicon Graphics computer and the steering wheel from a video game - Singh's research team developed an alarm system that tells drivers to correct their steering before their "car" pirouettes into the ditch.

When the simulated car starts to drift on its digital test track, a tone tells the driver to steer to the left or right. The volume of the tone indicates how hard to turn the wheel.

Many drivers know to steer into the direction of the skid, but "there's definitely more to it than that," Singh said.

Knowing how much to turn the wheel, how fast, and when to turn it back is a complex set of calculations, even for a top driver. Fortunately, its the sort of problem that a computer chip can solve almost instantly, he said. Electronics can even correct for the lag in drivers' reaction time by starting to signal a few tenths of a second early.

Singh's paper - co-authored by simulator expert Thenkurussi Kesavadas and professor Roger W. Mayne, an experienced auto researcher - was named one of the top papers at the Society of Automotive Engineers conference in 2000.

When it comes to winter driving conditions, Buffalo offers plenty of the real thing. But simulator research is a lot easier to study - and safer - than Singh's parking lot experiments.

Twenty-five students tried the icy-road simulator at UB's Amherst campus. After some getting used to, nearly all of them were able to avoid crashes and control the "car" better by obeying the alert system. The trials also found that sound worked better than visual signals such as flashing lights, probably because they don't draw the driver's eyes from the road.

The research at UB is part of a wave of interest in "intelligent vehicle" systems designed to avoid accidents, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Increasingly powerful electronics in cars and trucks are spurring a wave of systems that sense danger before drivers can.

"We are looking at crashes and how we can use technology to avoid them altogether," said Joseph Kanianthra, associate administrator for applied research and former director of NHTSA's Intelligent Vehicle program.

The potential savings from crash-avoiding technology is high. Then nation's 6.4 million annual police-reported crashes result in 41,000 to 42,000 deaths, 3.1 million injuries and $230 billion in damages and medical costs, he said.

Several ideas have graduated from laboratory testing and road track results to be incorporated into production vehicles, especially high-priced cars. Cadillac drivers can see hazards far out of range of their headlights with infra-red "night vision" imaging. Mercedes has "adaptive" cruise control that slows the car when a radar behind the grill sees trouble ahead. Some Toyota cars use "assistive braking" when a computer calculates that the driver needs some help.

But Kanianthra said he wasn't aware of research being done on systems specifically designed to aid drivers in hazardous road conditions. The toll of damages related to slippery conditions isn't known, Kanianthra said. Single-car crashes that involve leaving the road - a description of most spinouts - make up 20 percent of reported accidents.

Honda funded the first year of Singh's research to develop the driving simulator, and Veridian added a follow-on grant, he said. After that, interest seemed to fizzle out, and the study went on the shelf while Singh took a year's sabbatical.

Now he's revving up the simulator in UB's Furnas Hall and looking for sponsors to add a motion platform, to make it more realistic. Many drivers react to forces of acceleration and spin, as well as the view through the windshield, Singh said.

Before the system can be built into cars and trucks, there would need to be more simulator research, followed by costly trials with professional drivers on a test track.

Handling a car in snow takes more than research - something that Singh can vouch for firsthand.

"I have definitely become a better snow driver," since moving to Buffalo, Singh said. "I think it's practice."

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