Will driver-assistance technology help prevent accidents?

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are included in many new vehicles.  They feature such functions as blind-spot detection (sadly, usually only available with a high-end package), forward-collision warning and braking, lane-keeping warning and steering guidance, adaptive cruise control and the now required (in all new 2018 vehicles) backup camera. Automated parallel parking is also a high-end feature on some vehicles.

New vehicles come packed with radars, cameras and artificial intelligence aimed at making us safer drivers.  Driving is becoming more of a collaboration than a do-it-yourself activity.  Ultimately, fully autonomous vehicle technology may free us from the task of driving altogether, but that is still many years away because of challenges in interpreting sensor data and choosing actions.

Still, it is quite impressive how well current ADAS systems can operate.  I bought a new car this past year and appreciate being warned when a vehicle might be approaching from the side when I back up (before I could detect it) or when a car is in my blind spot and a warning flashes on my side mirror.  Adaptive cruise control makes highway driving much more pleasant as I need not brake frequently to keep a safe distance from the car ahead of me.  Forward collision warning can alert an inattentive driver that a crash is imminent.

But there are drawbacks.  The systems do not function perfectly.  On a recent return trip from Destin, Florida, the adaptive cruise control quit, warning me that a sensor had failed in the heavy rain.  My blind-spot detection system occasionally registers “phantoms,” invisible vehicles to my side, though the dealer insists they are going to tweak the algorithm with a software update.  Anyone ever have a Microsoft Windows update generate more problems than it solves? How likely is it that automotive updates will always be perfect?  So, ADAS is unlikely to be 100 percent reliable. 

Further, some features can be annoying.  Adaptive cruise control may slow you too much, and frequent lane-keeping alerts may become so annoying that drivers turn them off, negating any benefit. 

Finally, there is complexity.  Aside from monitoring the road situation as usual, drivers need to interpret and respond to many possible new alerts.  Will the systems prove too distracting when operating in combination?  The latter is a research question that one of my doctoral students, Dustin Souders, tried to address in his dissertation study when he investigated both forward collision warning and lane-keeping technologies in a driving simulator, either with a single system active or both operating together.  The bad news is that forward collision warning did not seem to affect older drivers’ performance in terms of the headway distance to a lead vehicle.  This finding was due in part to the very infrequent triggering of warning events in the scenario, because older drivers were already very cautious about maintaining a safe distance from the car ahead.  The good news is that lane-keeping alerts did improve how well-centered older drivers became in their lane.

The better news was that those in a condition with both systems active did not do any worse than those with just one system active.  Added complexity to the driving task didn’t faze these particular older drivers. So, my hunch is that these systems will help to improve safety for older drivers, assuming that the drivers are properly trained in ADAS use. I received no instruction from the dealership when I took possession of the new car, but that was probably because we never got through the whole new-car routine. When the salesman tried to pair my smartphone with Bluetooth in the car, it sent the infotainment system into a continuous reboot, and my very first drive was to the repair center.

Let me repeat: Complex operating software is never perfect. Another concern for assistance systems is that drivers may become overly reliant on the technology, technology that is imperfect. The real issue is whether driver plus ADAS is superior to driver alone. It is a bit too early to have a definitive answer, but I am optimistic.