Car Active eSafety: eIMPACT research - Lives and Injuries saved by Car Active eSafety systems

Monday, July 19, 2010

eIMPACT research - Lives and Injuries saved by Car Active eSafety systems

source: http://www.eimpact.eu & report (pdf) ; download all documents

Intelligent Vehicle Safety Systems (IVSS) or Car Active eSafety Systems (CAeSS) have tremendous potential for reducing road fatalities, which were over 40,000 in 2005 in the EU.

ICT systems such as ABS, cruise control, adaptive cruise control and electronic stability control (ESC) have been on the market for years, in some cases decades. The uptake of these systems varies; ESC has had a relatively quick uptake and now is present in approximately 40% of vehicles on the road. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) on the other hand is installed on less than 1% of vehicles.

To achieve safety goals, more vehicles need to be equipped. The deployment of the systems should be accelerated. To accelerate deployment, stakeholders such as road authorities, policy makers and industry want to know which systems should be chosen to be accelerated, and why?. What are the benefits? Who do they benefit? Who should promote them, and how?

eIMPACT Partners
http://www.eimpact.eu/download/PresentationFinalConference_Introduction.pdf

The eIMPACT project carried out impact assessments of twelve stand-alone and cooperative systems at the EU level, for 2010 and 2020. For each of these two future years, a scenario with a low penetration rate, reflecting no incentives to accelerate deployment, and a high penetration rate, including policy incentives for system deployment, was analysed. Outputs include safety impacts in terms of reductions in fatalities, injuries and accidents, traffic effects in terms of direct (traffic flow) and indirect (reduction in congestion) effects, and the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) for the twelve systems. The CBA was extended by a stakeholder analysis, examining the costs and benefits incurred by users, industry and public authorities. Finally, policy options and strategies were explored for deployment strategies of IVSS.

The following twelve systems met the criteria above (in brackets: the 3-letter abbreviation used in tables and figures throughout this report):

1. Electronic Stability Control (ESC)

2. Full Speed Range ACC (FSR)

3. Emergency Braking (EBR)

4. Pre-Crash Protection of Vulnerable Road Users (PCV)

5. Lane Change Assistant (Warning) (LCA)

6. Lane Keeping Support (LKS)

7. NightVisionWarn (NIW)

8. Driver Drowsiness Monitoring and Warning (DDM)

9. eCall (one-way communication) (ECA)

10. Intersection Safety (INS)

11. Wireless Local Danger Warning (WLD)

12. SpeedAlert (SPE)

By 2020 with high penetration scenarios or if ALL cars were fitted (in brackets), Electronic Stability Control (ESC) will reduce fatal accidents by 14% (16%), SpeedAlert (SPE) by 5% (8%), eCall (ECA) by 4% (6%) and Lane Keeping Support (LKS) by 3% (15%).

Other IVSS are not likely to have high market penetration rate but IF installed (a very big IF!) on all cars would significantly reduce fatalities: Pre-Crash Protection of Vulnerable Road Users (PCV), Lane Change Assistant Warning (LCA), Night Vision Warning (NIW), Driver Drowsiness Monitoring & Warning (DDM), Intersection Safety (INS), Wireless Local Danger Warning (WLD), Full Speed Range Adaptive Cruise Control (FSR).

As a benchmark, each percentage reduction in fatalities represents 230 fatalities & each percentage reduction in injuries represents European 3500 injuries. For example, in the case of ESC in the 2020 high scenario, 3,220 fatalities (14 * 230) in Europe would be avoided at the high penetration rate of 75% (Figure 2).

If ALL these Car Active eSafety Systems (CAeSS)were adopted by 2020 in ALL cars fatal accidents would be reduced by 80% (from 40,000 in Europe pa to 8,000). If ALL CAeSSachieved predicted high penetration rates fatal accidents would be reduced by 7600 but If these systems had low penetration rates fatal accidents would be reduced by 5700. (Table 1).

The impact assessment provides estimates of effects at realistic penetration rates of the IVSS in 2010 and 2020. For each year, two scenarios were considered: a low scenario, for a ‘business as usual’ situation, and a high scenario, where focused policy incentives are assumed.

27 technologies (Figure 8 & 9) were filtered down to just 12 (Table 4) viz Safe Speed & Safe Distance, Cooperative Tunnel Safety, Frontal Collision Warning, Driver alcohol measurement, Roll Over Avoidance, Safe Urban Intersection, Local Risk Information, Pedestrian & Cyclist Protection, Vehicle Dynamic Management (VDM), Adaptive Head Lights etc) - were NOT included in the final 12 selected.