The SARTRE road train trials in Spain have been successful

Road trains are one of the solutions for somewhat reducing consumption and cutting the accident rate. The SARTRE project (Safe Road Trains For The Environment), or in other words, safe road trains for the environment, is already in its third year of testing, with the most recent runs covering several hundred kilometres in Spain.

A road train makes it possible to “connect” a vehicle to a lead vehicle so that our car follows its path as one more addition to the convoy and is driven autonomously. In this way we could do other things, such as reading or talking, without having to monitor the driving, while saving fuel in the process.

For the first time, a Volvo XC60, a Volvo V60 and a Volvo S60, plus a truck added to the convoy, have been successfully connected while maintaining a speed of 85 km/h, with six metres of separation between vehicles. The stretch driven in Spain covered 200 kilometres and proceeded with complete normality, according to the project’s leaders.

According to SARTRE, the system should work without any changes to road infrastructure signals or to the components of the cars. The only thing that would need to be installed would be wireless networks in each vehicle to allow communication between them, which makes it a technology that is within easy reach.