ADAS effectively improved drivers’ behavior on-road and helped reduce crashes.

• ADAS could help older drivers avoid involvement in crashes.

In the United States, older driver over-involvement in crashes is getting worse in terms of driver fatalities. Between 2010 and 2019, drivers over age 65 experienced the largest increase in total driver fatalities, at 33.5%.

In 2019, persons aged 65 and older had the highest vehicle traffic death rates for both males and females. Female drivers over age 65 had a higher percentage of overall fatal crash rates than males in 2019. Younger drivers’ crashes are attributed largely to speeding, distraction, and so on. However, the fragility associated with advanced age leads to greater injury and death when older people are involved in crashes.

Advanced driver assistance systems features are particularly important for older drivers who make more errors. Due to age-related visual and psychomotor changes, older adults tend to scan less often and less effectively at intersections making it more likely that they make errors. These types of errors in combination with older adults’ greater fragility when injured in crashes make ADAS features particularly beneficial for older adults.

The ADAS features in preventing crashes, such as adaptive cruise control, are important for the adoption of such features to older drivers. Evidence that older females are particularly vulnerable to crash fatalities underlines the importance of understanding the influences on the acceptance and adoption of ADAS by that group. In reality, only 58% of all drivers report wanting ADAS features in their next vehicle.

Older drivers have been particularly slow to accept ADAS in vehicles. This raises important questions about sources of ADAS information preferred by drivers and their level of knowledge about ADAS. Addressing those questions can inform future efforts to increase acceptance and adoption of the systems and hence increase road safety, especially among older drivers.

 

• Appropriate training about the ADAS will be useful in increasing the acceptance and perception of such a system among drivers.

Recently, many researchers and experts conducted research and presented their results on road safety. Such as, they conducted research on the personal and societal benefits of ADAS systems such as blind-spot monitoring, lane departure warning, and forward-collision warning in light-duty vehicles sold in the United States in 2015.

The research estimated that the technologies above can collectively prevent up to 1.6 million crashes every year, including 7200 fatal crashes. Therefore, ADAS adoption will lead to personal safety and societal benefits.

A study evaluated the field effectiveness of ADAS technologies such as frontal collision warning with autonomous emergency braking, lane departure warning, and blind-spot detection equipped in BMW cars sold in the United States between 2014 and 2017 in preventing moderate-to-severe crashes.

The research shows that in the 2014 model year, vehicles equipped with ADAS were 13% less likely to crash than their non-ADAS versions. Similarly, in the 2017 model year, vehicles were 34% less likely to crash when all the systems above were deployed together. Enhancing the hazard warning systems available to drivers and automated systems such as advanced emergency braking systems, pedestrian warning, and blind-spot warning systems with visual and auditory warning can help improve the driver’s behavior on the road.

Nevertheless, some drivers felt that such a system was distracting and would not use it themselves but agreed that it would improve overall road safety. A lack of standardization and appropriate visual guides leads to an incomplete understanding of the system’s behavior and limitations. As a result, there is a need for proper driver education on ADAS systems to improve driver behavior and effective system use in improving overall road safety and preventing collisions.