Lehrte, December 12th 2012 — On highways (Autobahnen) for some of the repair and cleaning tasks for e.g. cleaning reflector posts or mowing grass mobile construction sites are used. Currently this requires up to four vehicles. The first carries the work equipment and carries out the actual work. Up to three vehicles are following solely to secure the construction site and personnel. This poses a risk to the crew of the so-called flash cars (Blitzwagen) as there have been several incidents where regular trucks collided with those cars. In some cases those were fatal.

This led to a study conducted by the consulting engineers Dr. Norbert Handke for the ministry of economy, work and traffic of Lower Saxony. Götting, Lehrte, has supported this study as a technical adviser and has proven the feasibility through a demonstration on the German Autobahn BAB A7.

The demonstration took place on November 28th 2012 in the area of a construction site between the exits Garlstorf and Ramelsloh. The main vehicle was provided by the agency in charge of turnpike maintenance Hittfeld and slightly modified by Götting. The safety vehicle was an electric vehicle from the Eco Carrier brand that Götting had prepared.

Both vehicles were connected via radio data communication thus enabling the safety vehicle to follow the leading vehicle in a certain distance or with lateral offset. In addition to this the safety vehicle could be controlled remotely from the front passenger in the leading vehicle, to ensure that the safety vehicle can be operated driverless even under exceptional circumstances.

Contact person: Sales International

Convoy with a semi-automatic flash car

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