Toronto, Ontario — A research team based out of Ireland’s University of Limerick has narrowed the six essential pieces of ADAS technology that hold the potential to reduce auto collisions by nearly 24 percent.
The study, carried out by an Irish team addressing U.K. roadways, found that a vehicle equipped with adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, blindspot warning, electronic stability control, forward collision warning and lane departure warning features would likely cut its risk of a collision by nearly a quarter.
The U.S.’s AAA Foundation conducted similar research in 2018 and came to many of the same conclusions, finding that, on U.S. roads, the combined use of all of those systems has the potential to prevent 40 percent of all passenger vehicle crashes, 37 percent of injuries that occur in crashes involving passenger vehicles, and 29 percent of all deaths in crashes that involve passenger vehicles.
Of the six most key systems, automatic emergency braking was found to be the most effective in preventing crashes in three of the four accident scenarios tested. The system was shown to be 28 percent effective in intersections, 27.7 percent effective in rear-end collision scenarios and 28.4 percent effective in preventing pedestrian collisions.
“It is encouraged that future road safety campaigns include the vehicle’s level of autonomy or ADAS equipment to allow for a more accurate estimation,” read an excerpt of the research paper.
“Additionally, the level of reductions achieved in this paper assumes a full market penetration of ADAS in which all vehicles involved in the accident reports have the studied technologies…Even though the safety benefits of ADAS are notable, a potential limitation is that their functionality and proper application depend on human drivers and their trust in these systems…Vehicles enabled with ADAS provide significant societal benefits, but there is a lack of comprehensive literature on their potential accident reductions across various driving contexts.”
The paper pointed out that environmental factors such as darkness and rain continue to impact the effectiveness of these systems, as well as the fact that reports such as these provide automakers a benchmark from which to improve ADAS features.
A recent survey conducted by AAA found that 77 percent of American drivers would prefer automakers to prioritize improving ADAS technology instead of attempting to develop self-driving vehicles.
“You can’t sell consumers on the future if they don’t trust the present,” said AAA’s director of automotive engineering, Greg Brannon, in a statement. “And drivers tell us they expect their current driving assistance technology to perform safely all the time. But unfortunately, our testing demonstrates spotty performance is the norm rather than the exception.”
