European Study Quantifies Value of Driver-Assist Technology

A four-year, $27 million study in Europe says the region could save billions of dollars by equipping cars and trucks with such technologies as adaptive cruise control, collision warning, speed regulators, blind-spot sensors, lane departure warning and curve speed warning.

The research was conducted by euroFOT, a consortium of 28 carmakers, suppliers, universities and research institutes. The report includes results of more than 12 months of field tests with 1,000 vehicles, whose every move was recorded during a combined 11 million miles of driving. The group says it collected and analyzed hundreds of terabytes of data.

EuroFOT notes that more than 90% of traffic accidents in the 27-member European Union can be blamed on driver behavior. The group says the cost-benefit ratio for deploying adaptive cruise control and collision warning systems alone is 1.3 for cars and 1.8 for trucks meaning the benefits are respectively 30% and 80% greater than the cost of the technology itself.

The group estimates that equipping vehicles with both systems could reduce the likelihood of a driver hitting the vehicle ahead by 42%. It also says universal use of the two technologies would reduce injury-causing crashes by about 6% for cars and 1% for trucks.

Avoiding those accidents also would improve traffic efficiency in the EU by eliminating more than three million vehicle-hours of traffic slowdowns. That, in turn, would reduce fleet fuel consumption by about 3% for cars and 2% for trucks, according to the analysis.

The study found that about 80% of drivers agree that highway safety is improved by using blind-spot detection systems. Most drivers report that they use such technology to complement rather than substitute for visual checks.

Similarly, about 75% of participants in the field test like systems that warn them in advance if they are driving too fast to negotiate an upcoming curve. The participants says the more they used such a system, the more they trusted and relied upon it.

The research also says the use of navigation systems tends to make drivers display better lane discipline, keep more distance from the vehicle ahead and avoid "harsh" braking.

Industry members of the euroFOT project include Audi, BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Delphi, Ford, Harman International, MAN Truck & bus and Volvo.

For more details about the project, click HERE.