On the road safety benefits of advanced driver assistance systems in different driving contexts

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have introduced several benefits in the vehicular industry, and their proliferation presents potential opportunities to decrease road accidents. The reasons are mainly attributed to the enhanced perception of the driving environment and reduced human errors. However, as environmental and infrastructural conditions influence the performance of ADAS, the estimation of accident reductions varies across geographical regions. This study presents an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates the literature on advanced driving technologies and road safety to quantify the expected impact of ADAS on accident reduction across combinations of road types, lighting, and weather conditions. The paper investigates the safety effec?tiveness of ADAS and the distribution of frequency and severity of road accidents across 18 driving contexts and eight accident types. Using road safety reports from the United Kingdom (UK), it is found that a high concen?tration of accidents (77%) occurs within a small subset of contextual conditions (4 out of 18) and that the most severe accidents happen in dark conditions on rural roads or motorways. The results of the safety effectiveness analysis show that a full deployment of the six most common ADAS would reduce the road accident frequency in the UK by 23.8%, representing an annual decrease of 18,925 accidents. The results also show that the most frequent accident contexts, urban-clear-daylight and rural-clear-daylight, can be reduced by 29%, avoiding 7,020 and 3,472 accidents, respectively. Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) is the most impactful technology, reducing three out of the four most frequent accident categories – intersection (by 28%), rear-end (by 27.7%), and pedestrian accidents (by 28.4%). This study helps prioritise resources in ADAS research and development focusing on the most relevant contexts to reduce the frequency and severity of road accidents. Furthermore, the identified contextual accident hotspots can assist road safety stakeholders in risk mitigation programs.