Advanced driver assistance systems
1 Overview
Vehicle technologies and road casualty reduction
Vehicle safety is a key strategy to address ambitious long-term and interim goals and targets
as part of an integrated Safe System approach (See ERSO web text on Road Safety Management
and Vehicle Safety). Secondary safety or crash protection technologies continue to deliver large
savings; in the last few years, primary safety or crash avoidance technologies have started to
contribute to casualty reduction and hold potentially large future promise. At the same time, new
in-vehicle technologies under development have the potential to increase as well as decrease
crash injury risk through introducing new driver distraction and inadvertent behavioural change
that may solve one problem but create another. The safety effects of some of the technologies
that are being promoted widely in the name of safety have yet to be demonstrated. More
promising safety technologies that address large road safety problems and where benefits have
been demonstrated are being promoted in only a few countries or are being taken up at a lesser
rate across EU countries. The European Commission’s Cars 21 strategy (see Cars 21) envisages
an automotive industry that is leading in technology (clean, fuel-efficient, safe, and connected)
and where vehicle safety can and should be further improved, for occupants and unprotected
road users. The European New Car Assessment Programme (EuroNCAP) is developing a new role
in assessing the safety quality of e-Safety systems through Advanced EuroNCAP and a new road
map is underway to allow emerging crash avoidance technologies to be included (albeit not
supplanting crash protection measures) into the assessment scheme by 2015. With the rapid
deployment of new technologies on to the market, evaluation of systems referring to the
analysis of final and intermediate outcome data as well as other relevant data is essential before
wide-scale deployment.
Advanced driver assistance systems – a definition
Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are defined here as vehicle-based intelligent safety
systems which could improve road safety in terms of crash avoidance, crash severity mitigation
and protection and post-crash phases. ADAS can, indeed, be defined as integrated in-vehicle or
infrastructure based systems which contribute to more than one of these crash-phases. For
example, intelligent speed adaptation and advanced braking systems have the potential to
prevent the crash or mitigate the severity of a crash. This text discusses a variety of measures
that are being promoted widely as ADAS, e-Safety or active safety measures, the knowledge
about which is gradually evolving, including information on the costs and benefits of such
measures.
Advanced driver assistance systems – safety effects known
The evaluation of ADAS is a young science and their road safety performance is of principal
concern to road safety managers. Outcomes can be evaluated in terms of deaths and serious
injuries (final outcomes) or any activity which is causally linked to these e.g., the level of seat
belt use (intermediate outcomes). In this web text an intervention is deemed to have a ‘known
positive safety effect’ if there are results from more than one study done in a similar road safety
context and, where the results are statistically significant and indicate a useful level of
effectiveness. Research in the EU and elsewhere has confirmed that the following interventions
are likely to make a large contribution towards meeting ambitious safety targets and goals (ETSC
2006 eSafety): Intelligent Speed Adaptation (advisory ISA, Speed Alert); seat belt reminders in
all seating positions in new cars, electronic stability control, alcohol interlocks for repeat
offenders and fleet drivers, anti-lock braking for motorcycles and event and journey data
