TRUCK & TECH
The new Hino 300 4x4 series.
CONTROL V Safety systems have played a major role in impacting freight movements in Australia. None more so than Vehicle Stability Control which has done much to improve safety on our roads.
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ehicle technology has developed to reduce the likelihood of accidents caused by a number of factors including, but not limited to, human error, inclement weather and adverse road conditions. Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) was first offered in cars in the late 1980s. The system includes both roll control and yaw control that autonomously corrects oversteer, understeer and rollover situations. Roll control systems sense the lateral acceleration of a vehicle and reduce the risk of rollover through reducing engine torque and strategically applying selected brakes. Yaw control allows the driver to point the vehicle in the desired direction, with individual wheels braked to maintain directional stability. In heavy vehicle applications, VSC can only be fitted to powered units such as rigid trucks and prime movers. Roll 48
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Stability Control (RSC) can be fitted to trailers and also provides significant safety benefits by mitigating the likelihood of rollovers. RSC provides roll control in a similar manner to VSC but does not include yaw control. While stability control systems will not prevent all rollover incidents, both VSC and RSC allow a driver to maintain control of their vehicle with the aim of ideally avoiding or at the very least reducing the severity of a rollover or other incident. As a Toyota group member, Hino has been at the cutting edge of safety developments in trucks over the last two decades, having cleverly adapted Toyota passenger car safety technology to suit commercial vehicle applications. Back in 2001 with the release of the light-duty Dutro, forerunner of the 300 Series, Hino became the first to market with SRS driver’s airbag, disc brakes and ABS on a light-duty truck.
By 2011 Hino’s 300 Series became the first light-duty truck with standard VSC, with this precedent flowing through to the medium-duty 500 Series Wide Cab and Standard Cab versions in 2017 and 2019 respectively, and subsequently the 300 Series 4x4 in 2018. Subsequent to this, the company now offers VSC as standard equipment on every model from its 300 Series that can be driven on a car licence, through to the 500 Series 6x4 350hp FM variant. Daniel Petrovski, Hino Australia’s Manager of Product Strategy, explains that the benefits of having standard VSC across the light and medium-duty Hino range are far-reaching, and even more so with the 300 Series 4x4 model. “VSC has long been recognised as a lifesaving system both on and off-road, and there are some mines that now accept that if a vehicle is so equipped and also has an ECE R29 compliant cab then the
