Shenyang Aerospace University

HOW NEW TECHNOLOGIES AFFECT

TRANSPORTATION SAFETY

STUDENT NAME: 语嫣

CLASS: 2051520112

STUDENT ID: 205152011211

 How new technologies affect transportation safety.

How new technologies affect

transportation safety
Road crashes are the eight leading cause of deaths globally making every year more
than 1.3 million fatal victims and leaving 20 to 50 million people with nonfatal but debilitating
injuries. This takes a huge toll on victims and their families, through the human suffering
caused by these injuries, treatment costs for the injured and through the loss of productivity of
those killed or disabled. [1] But what if this could be prevented? What if instead of ‘accidents’,
all of these casualties could actually be avoided? We live in an era where technology has
become deeply intertwined with our lives, making it easier, safer, and cost-effective. Moreover,
safety-oriented tech modifications on automobiles could make the difference between life and
death. And as seen over the years, automobile companies are increasing their awareness on the
need to make safety a priority in their designs, and more countries are elevating the safety
standards for vehicles, requiring all vehicles on their roads to include certain safety features.

Of all the safety features in an automobile, no doubt the seat belt is the most effective,
increasing the chances of surviving a car crash by up to 60%. For example, in the USA, the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated that from 1975 to 2017,
seat belts have saved 374,276 lives and reported that now, around 15,000 lives are saved each
year because drivers and their passengers were wearing seat belts when they were in a road
traffic crash.[2] However, safety belts were designed to keep the drivers and passengers safe in
the event of an accident or a car crash. Recently, emphasis is put on designing and
implementing features on vehicles that will prevent the accidents and crashes from occurring.

One that stands out and has been receiving much attention and credit is the Automatic
Emergency Braking system (AEB). The AEB is a combination of sensors (radar based or
camera based) and software that detect pedestrians as well as other vehicles and objects on the
path of the oncoming vehicle. The sensors are used to scan for these ‘obstacles’ on the path of
the vehicle and then send this information to the software, which will in turn send an either
audible or visual warning to the driver and if it detects that a collision is imminent, it will apply
the brakes to either mitigate or completely avoid a crash, faster than a human could react. Each
year, the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) performs various tests on different
vehicles to rate their safety levels. In 2019, an experiment on pedestrian automatic emergency

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 How new technologies affect transportation safety.

braking systems was conducted for a group of 16 different midsized vehicles (both luxury and
non-luxury models). [3] Each vehicle was run at two different speeds through a series of three
pedestrian scenarios: an adult walking in the vehicle’s travel lane near the edge of the road (run
at 40km/h and 60km/h), a child darting into the street from behind two parked vehicles (run at
19km/h and 40km/h) and finally, an adult pedestrian on the right side of the road entering the
street in the path of an oncoming vehicle (run at 19km/h and 40km/h). Each test was performed
in full daylight on dry pavement. In each of these tests, the system had 1 or 2 seconds to stop
the car to avoid hitting the pedestrian dummy. The ratings range from superior, advanced, basic
to no credit, and the vehicles were rated based on how well the vehicle either stopped or reduced
its speed before striking the pedestrian. From this experiment, six different automakers
achieved a superior rating, another six received an advanced rating, one received a basic rating
and three received no credit at all. One of the six best ranked automakers was Subaru, and the
IIHS conducted a study on Subaru’s AEB system called EyeSight. “EyeSight performs several
functions, including forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise
control, lane departure warning and lead vehicle start alert. It also includes pedestrian detection,
enabling the system to brake automatically for pedestrians in addition to other vehicles”. [4]
This study showed that pedestrian related insurance claims reduced by about 35% on vehicles
that include the AEB system versus similar vehicles without it. In light of these results, the
IIHS confirms that these systems do reduce real-world crashes and encourage consumers to
shop for vehicles that have pedestrian AEB systems, and to check for the vehicles’ ratings to
understand which vehicles have the latest technologies available.

Another system, which is closely related to the AEB, is the Adaptive Cruise Control
(ACC). ACC systems use radars mounted on the front of the car near the bumper or behind the
grill. (Some manufacturers use lasers, although radars have proven to be better because they
work well even in adverse conditions). When ACC is turned on, a radar beam is fired which
travels until it hits another vehicle in front of it, and the return signal is sent to a computer
which calculates the distance between the vehicles. The ACC then uses this information to keep
the vehicle a set number of seconds behind the other by dynamically changing the speed. Many
ACC systems also feature collision avoidance; hence it is closely related to the AEB. Collision
avoidance means that the ACC will send an audio or visual warning and apply the brakes more
aggressively if it senses that it is getting too close to another vehicle or object. When combined
with Lane Keeping Aid/ Lane Centering (a system that steers the car back into the lane and /
or warns with sound signals or steering wheel vibrations if the car threats to leave its own lane

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unintentionally), the new system is commonly known as Pilot Assist or Driver Assistance
system which makes for partially automated vehicles. In 2020, IIHS’s Highway Loss Data
Institute (IIHS-HLDI) conducted a study in which they compared insurance claims data from
BMW vehicles for model years 2013-17. [5] For this study, HLDI analysts compared the claims
data from four different BMW crash avoidance packages. The first one included forward
collision warning and lane departure warning. The second one included those features as well
as AEB. The Driving Assistance package added ACC. Driving Assistance Plus package
includes all those features as well as lane centering and front cross-traffic alert. For each
package, HLDI looked at what effect they had on the rate of collision, property damage liability
and bodily injury liability claims per insured vehicle year. The last three of the mentioned
packages were associated with reductions in claim rates. The Driving Assistance package —
which included ACC— reduced collision by 6 %, property damage by 27% and bodily injury
claim rates by 37%. This shows that the combination of improvements in front crash prevention
and the addition of adaptive cruise control results in large reductions in the frequency of
property damage liability and bodily injury liability claims.

Nevertheless, this is a system that requires user control and setup; the user may choose
to deactivate this function or even misuse it. “ACC does have some safety benefits, but it’s
important to consider how drivers might cancel out these benefits by misusing the system,”
says IIHS Statistician Sam Monfort. [6] An IIHS study conducted by Monfort shows that
drivers are more likely speed when driving on vehicles with ACC. When selecting a speed to
“set and forget,” many drivers choose one that is over the limit. The paper showed that drivers
tended to exceed the speed limit the most, by an average of 13 km/h, in zones with an 88 km/h
speed limit, compared with 8 km/h in areas with 95 to 105 km/h speed limit (both manual
drives and those using ACC). In the areas with a lower speed limit, drivers who were using
ACC exceeded the legal limit slightly more than the manual drivers, by an average of about 2
km/h. This may not sound like much, but in fact it means that ACC and partial automation users
are at about 10% higher risk of a fatal crash, according to a common formula for calculating
probable crash outcomes. It is important to note though, that this study did not analyse real-
world crashes. Nevertheless, “Driving faster is more dangerous” says Monfort “You can’t argue
with physics.” He explains that drivers may behave this way because these systems do not
prevent them from setting a speed that is higher than the legal limits. Also, the tested systems
allow drivers to change their selected speed up or down by 8 km/h at the touch of a button,
which might at least partially explain why users exceeded the legal limit by larger amounts

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when they had the feature switched on than when driving manually. Even so, IIHS still
acknowledges ACC systems as beneficial for vehicle safety but suggests that manufacturers
continue working towards enhancing the systems to make them safer, reducing the risk for
users to consciously misuse them.

All the features mentioned above are implemented on individual vehicles and/or depend
on user’s prudence. And most transportation problems are due to a lack of accurate and timely
information. Inadequate cooperation among individuals in the transport industry adds to the
major problems. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) help limit these problems by
improving the industry’s coordination and proper data transmission. ITS are systems that allow
effective data exchange through wireless technologies so that vehicles can connect with each
other, with the road infrastructure and with other road users. [7] Some examples of ITS include
electronic toll collection, vehicle-to-vehicle communication, intelligent traffic management,
fleet management, electric vehicle charging and others. ITS can make transport safer, smarter,
faster, more efficient, and more sustainable by applying various information and
communication technologies to all modes of passenger and freight transport. In 2003, the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published evaluation
results for ITS technologies in all its countries (30 countries at the time). [8] These results prove
that ITS safety technologies have the potential to dramatically impact road safety. It was
estimated that ITS safety technologies can save as many as 47 000 lives per year (worth over
USD 73 billion per year) and potentially reduce the total number of road crash injuries and
fatalities by approximately 40% (worth approximately USD 194 billion per year) in OECD
countries. To get the benefits listed here, these technologies would have to be fully deployed
in OECD countries. Hence, it would take about 20 or 30 years to see the benefits. However,
the benefits are so great that the mere indication of being able to reach them should drive not
only OECD governments, but all governments to actively support and promote the full
deployment of as many of these safety technologies as possible.

All the facts mentioned above only serve to prove that new technologies do indeed have
an impact on road safety. As time passes, the world becomes more conscious of the need to
preserve and protect human life and finds ways to achieve that by using the best tools at our
disposal, human intelligence and technology. By combining these two powerful tools,
manufacturers are able to develop more sophisticated, more refined, and more importantly,

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safer means of transportation and road management systems. Road crashes are now the eight-
leading cause of deaths globally. And as humans, accidents and crashes are inevitable. But
actions can be taken to reduce the fatality and injury rates that result from them. Governments
all over the globe have been working hand in hand to both raise awareness and promote the
implementation of the newest safety features in vehicles and roads, many of them making these
a standard for driving on their roads. A large number of the safety features mentioned here were
designed with the greater aim of having self-driving vehicles in the future. This goal is still far
from becoming reality, but we benefit from the technology in the meanwhile. And even though
human imperfection many times leads to catastrophic results, the data confirms, including
safety features on vehicles and roads can help to reduce the causality rates all over the world.
[2,4,5,8]

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REFERENCES

[1] WHO (2018), GLOBAL STATUS REPORT ON ROAD SAFETY

[2] NHTSA (2019), Crash Stats: Lives Saved in 2017 by Restraint Use and Minimum Drinking
Age Laws

[3]https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/performance-of-pedestrian-crash-prevention-varies-
among-midsize-cars

[4] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/subaru-crash-avoidance-system-cuts-pedestrian-crashes

[5] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/benefits-from-advanced-driver-assistance-systems-are-
growing-new-hldi-study-finds

[6] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/adaptive-cruise-control-spurs-drivers-to-speed

[7] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/intelligent-transport-systems_en

[8] OECD (2003), Road Safety: Impact of New Technologies, Paris.

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APPENDIX A

Appendix A 1 Automatic Emergency Breaking test illustration.

Figure on the left | Parallel adult: Adult in right lane near edge of road, facing away from traffic —
tests run at 40 and 60 km/h.

Figure on the middle | Perpendicular child: Child runs into road; parked vehicles obstruct view —
tests run at 19 and 40 km/h.

Figure on the right | Perpendicular adult: Adult walks across road — tests run at 19 and 40 km/h.

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Appendix A 2 Impact of BMW advanced driver assistance features on insurance claim frequency.