Field effectiveness of general motors advanced driver assistance and headlighting systems

Abstract

This study examined the field effectiveness of General Motors advanced driver assistance and headlighting systems. A total of 8,311,707 Model Year 2013–2019 vehicles were matched to police-reported crashes from 12 states. The quasi-induced exposure method was used to compare system-relevant and system-irrelevant (control) crash counts for equipped and unequipped vehicles. Logistic regression was used to adjust for ten covariates. Results indicated fusion/radar Automatic Emergency Braking, camera Automatic Emergency Braking, and Forward Collision Alert systems reduced rear-end striking crashes by 45%, 38%, and 20%, respectively. When restricting data to crashes in which someone in the General Motors striking vehicle was injured, these reductions were elevated to 59%, 54%, and 31%, respectively, providing evidence of additional crash mitigation benefits. Similarly, the Lane Keep Assist with Lane Departure Warning and Lane Departure Warning (alone) systems provided 12% and 10% reductions in lane departure crashes, respectively, with corresponding benefits in the injury analysis increasing to 19% and 18%, respectively. The Lane Change Alert with Side Blind Zone Alert system reduced lane change crashes by 16%. Reverse Automatic Braking, Rear Cross Traffic Alert, Rear Park Assist, and Rear Vision Camera (where each of these systems generally included all of the preceding systems) produced, respectively, an 82%, 55%, 36%, and 24% reduction in backing crashes. For Front Pedestrian Braking, a non-significant 14% reduction was observed for the limited set of available pedestrian crash cases. Intellibeam (auto high beam headlighting), High-Intensity Discharge headlights, and the combination of these two systems provided 26%, 11%, and 32% reductions (relative to halogen headlights) in a combined set of (unlighted) nighttime animal, pedestrian, and bicyclist crashes, respectively. These results provide widespread evidence of the substantial crash avoidance and injury reduction opportunities afforded by the production systems evaluated, as well as identify untapped system opportunities for moving toward a zero crashes vision.