They call it the Road Guardian and it’s in Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong and Wyndham for the next week.
Mercedes-Benz has loaned its GLE63 S Coupe to Victoria Police for 12 months to raise awareness about vehicle safety.
Sergeant Aaron Prentice-Evans, of the Westgate highway patrol, said the car had just about every safety feature a vehicle could have.
“Last year, road policing command approached Monash University to identify some of the safest vehicles available in Australia so we could promote the future of vehicle safety,” he said. “As a result, we formed a partnership with Mercedes-Benz.
“The message we’re trying to push to both the public and car manufacturers in general is that there’s no reason why some of your cheaper cars couldn’t have most, if not all, of the safety features on that vehicle. If every car on the road had the safety features that that vehicle’s got we could potentially reduce the road toll by a third overnight.” Safety features include warnings if a car is drifting in a lane or about to leave a lane, automatically maintaining a safe distance from the car in front when on cruise control, and warnings for cars in a blind spot.
“If you go to change lanes and you ignore the warning it will assist you by providing a physical warning with the steering wheel and an audible warning, and will actually nudge you back into your lane,” Sergeant Prentice-Evans said.
“It has driver assistance. If it senses that potentially you have been driving for a while and may be nodding off, it will maintain driver awareness so that you’re staying awake and in control. We’re looking at trying to get some of the safety features of this vehicle as standard in all cars.”
He said road policing command was committed to the four “safe systems” principles: safer roads, safer speeds, safer drivers and safer vehicles.
