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TECHNOLOGY Saturday 26 auguSt 2017

Studies: Automated safety systems are preventing car crashes

By JOAN LOWY keeping systems cut such concerned that they are
Associated Press crashes by half it would be changing driver behavior.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Safe- significant, she said. Cic- A separate study by the
ty systems to prevent cars chino said about a quarter insurance industry-funded
from drifting into another of traffic fatalities involve a institute and the Massa-
lane or that warn drivers of vehicle drifting into another chusetts Institute of Tech-
vehicles in their blind spots lane. nology’s AgeLab found
are beginning to live up to “Now we have evidence that drivers using auto-
their potential to reduce that this technology really mated systems that scan
crashes significantly, ac- can save lives and has the for parking spots and then
cording to two studies re- potential to prevent thou- park the car spend a lot
leased Wednesday. sands of deaths once it’s more time looking at dash-
At the same time, research on every vehicle,” Cicchi- board displays than at the
by the Insurance Institute no said. parking spot, the road in
for Highway Safety raises If all passenger vehicles front or the road behind.
concern that drivers may had been equipped with That was true even when
be less vigilant when relying lane departure warning the systems were search- In this May 22, 2012 file photo, professional test driver Dave Mc-
on automated safety sys- systems in 2015, an esti- ing for a parking spot and Millan demonstrates the dashboard warning signal at an auto-
tems or become distracted mated 85,000 police-re- drivers were still responsible mobile test area in Oxon Hill.
by dashboard displays that ported crashes would have for steering.q Associated Press
monitor how the systems been prevented, the study
are performing. found.
The two institute studies A second institute study of
found that lane-keeping blind-spot detection sys-
systems, some of which tems — usually warning
even nudge the vehicle lights in side mirrors — found
back into its lane for the the systems lower the rate
driver, and blind-spot moni- of all lane-change crashes
toring systems had lower by 14 percent and the rate
crash rates than the same of such crashes with injuries
vehicles without the sys- by 23 percent.
tems. If all passenger vehicles
The lane-keeping study were equipped with the
looked at police crash data systems about 50,000 po-
from 25 states between lice-reported crashes a
2009 and 2015 for vehicle year could be prevented,
models where the systems the study found.
were sold as optional. Lane-keeping, blind-spot
Lane-keeping systems low- monitoring, and automatic
ered rates of single-vehicle, braking systems, which can
sideswipe and head-on prevent rear-end crashes,
crashes of all severities by are some of the building
11 percent, and crashes of blocks of self-driving car
those types in which there technology.
were injuries, by 21 per- Greg Brannon, the Au-
cent, the study found. tomobile Association of
Because there were only America’s director of auto-
40 fatal crashes in the motive engineering, called
data, researchers used a the institute’s studies “en-
simpler analysis that didn’t couraging.”
control for differences in But he cautioned that is
drivers’ ages, genders, in- “critical that drivers un-
surance risk and other fac- derstand the capabilities
tors for those crashes. They and, more importantly,
found the technology cut the limitations of the safety
the fatal crash rate by 86 technology in their vehicle
percent. before getting behind the
That’s probably high, said wheel.”
Jessica Cicchino, the in- For all the promise tech-
stitute’s vice president for nologies hold to enhance
research, but even if lane- safety, researchers are also