The Impact of ADAS on Improving Road Safety and Preventing Accidents

Technological breakthroughs are affecting many areas of our daily lives, including road safety. This is hard to miss, as official statistics on the number of traffic accidents show a decline compared to 20 years ago. Modern vehicle manufacturers are introducing advanced systems that have a positive impact on the safety of drivers, passengers, and surrounding pedestrians.

We are talking about ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and its impressive impact on safety. This category includes various sensors, cameras, radars, and even artificial intelligence capabilities. In this article, we would like to tell you more about several advanced driver assistance systems that have already proven their effectiveness in practice!

Why ADAS Is More Than a Convenience

ADAS remains a luxury to many drivers, an additional feature that makes their car more comfortable or lets them spend more money on their car to afford a better trim level. Is it true? As a matter of fact, these systems indirectly decrease the risk of accidents, shield susceptible road users and minimise the monetary and human expense of accidents to drivers, companies and urban areas. The main reasons ADAS is now essential include:

• It minimizes human error and reaction delays.
• It provides a 360-degree awareness of the surroundings.
• It operates continuously without fatigue or distraction.
• It helps insurers and fleet operators reduce claims and operational costs.

As traffic becomes more congested and speeds remain high, ADAS evolves from a convenience feature into a critical safety system. It is also a safety structure that is of critical importance within any modern vehicle.

1. Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB)

One of the most effective ADAS functions in terms of preventing rear-end and pedestrian accidents is Automatic Emergency Braking. AEB performs radar, lidar, or camera surveillance of the road ahead, and calculates the velocity of closing up. It alerts the driver in case a collision occurs. If the driver fails to respond on time, the system applies the brakes to slow down or prevent a collision.

Contemporary AEB systems operate in urban traffic, on highways, and occasionally at crossroads and identify vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians. They particularly come in handy during stop-and-go traffic, where brief distractions can result in low-speed collisions. Although not all collisions can be averted, AEB drastically decreases the impact speed and thus minimizes injuries and repair expenses as well as lost time on the road by both individual motorists and commercial trucking fleets.

2. Lane Departure Warning (LDW)

The next technology we want to share is the Lane Departure Warning. It deals with one of the most frequent and hazardous scenarios on highways, unintended lane drifting. How does it work? LDW applies cameras to check the car’s position in the lane against the lane markings and issues a warning to the driver whenever the car begins to overrun the lane.

The warnings may be visual, auditory, or delivered through steering-wheel vibrations. Other cars include both LDW and Lane Keeping Assist, which lightens the steering to ensure the car is within the center. Through these functions, the danger of side collisions, rollovers, and head-on crashes that occur as a result of leaving the lane at high speed is mitigated.

3. Blind Spot Detection (BSD)

Blind Spot Detection is devoted to the area that cannot be entirely seen by the mirrors: the sides of the car and the zone located a little behind it. By radar sensors, BSD continuously scans these areas and alerts the motorist in case there is a vehicle, motorcycle, or cyclist in a lane he or she is trying to change. This is essential on multi-lane roads and in heavy traffic.

Final Thoughts

The AEB, LDW, and BSD technologies never substitute responsible behavior, but the impact of the unavoidable errors of humans dramatically decreases. This will translate to reduced close calls, stress, and confidence in complex traffic among individual drivers. In the case of businesses and fleets, ADAS will translate to reduced accidents, reduced insurance payments, and increased vehicle availability.