Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/accident-crash-tree-automobile-car-2161956/
In 2022, 42,514 people lost their lives in vehicle accidents in the USA. In Great Britain, an overall 29,643 were severely injured or killed in 2022. Around 300 of these fatalities were found to be specific to drunk driving incidents.
Vehicle accidents kill or injure thousands of people each year. However, with the rise of technology in vehicles, the automotive industry is striving to become safer for not only car owners but also pedestrians.
If you’re interested in how the automotive industry is transforming itself to prevent vehicle accidents, this article is for you. Let’s take a look at some of the technology being added to vehicles to make them safer.
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) technology is designed to help assist drivers when making decisions on the road. Some of the key ADAS technology includes:
- Adaptive cruise control (ACC): This feature automatically adjusts a car’s speed to a safer speed when it’s getting too close to the car in front. This helps to reduce the need to accelerate or brake constantly. This is designed to help prevent rear end collisions.
- Lane departure warning (LDW) and lane keeping assist (LKA): This feature gives out a warning signal noise if the car automatically steers towards the edge of the road or onto the other side of the road. It’s meant to help prevent accidents from drivers who may be drowsy or distracted.
- Automatic emergency braking (AEB): AEB systems can detect if a collision is going to happen and automatically applies the brakes for you to reduce or prevent the accident occurring. This is generally good for rear-end collision prevention.
- Blind spot Detection (BSD): This feature uses sensors to monitor blindspot areas around the car. If another vehicle is detected in the blind spot, the system alerts the driver, reducing the risk of a side collision.
These ADAS features are designed to help minimize the impact of a crash or to help prevent it, however if you’re still involved in a vehicle accident, it’s important to find a professional car injury lawyer in birmingham, or in your local area, to help you through the laws around vehicle accidents.
Self-Driving Vehicles
Self-driving cars are a revolution in the future of road safety. These vehicles use a combination of sensors, cameras, and artificial intelligence (AI) to navigate the roads without any human intervention. While these vehicles are still in development, there’s some levels of automation which are making waves in test models:
- Level 1: Driver assistance: At this level, the vehicle can help the driver in areas such as steering or acceleration, but as a driver you’re still in control of the vehicle.
- Level 2: Partial automation: At this level, vehicles can perform a number of tasks simultaneously, such as steering and acceleration, but the driver must remain ready to take control of the vehicle at any point of the drive.
- Level 3: Conditional automation: At this level, the car can drive itself in certain conditions, such as highway driving, but the driver must be ready to take over.
- Level 4: High automation: At this level vehicles can operate without human intervention in most conditions, but they still require a driver if conditions are severe.
- Level 5: Full automation: At this level, vehicles are fully autonomous and can drive themselves in any conditions, without any need for a driver. Though these are fully self-driving vehicles, road users still have to be careful as accidents can still occur during the testing and development stage of these cars.
Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Communication
Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication is an upcoming technology that communicates with other road based infrastructure and sends this information back to the driver. This means the vehicle can give updates on road hazards, traffic conditions and other potential dangers. There’s a number of V2X communication systems which include:
- Vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V): V2V communication gives vehicles the ability to share information about their speed, position, and direction with nearby vehicles. This information can be used to alert drivers to potential collisions.
- Vehicle-to-infrastructure communication (V2I): V2I communication gives cars the ability to receive information from traffic lights, road signs, and other infrastructure. This can help drivers make better decisions in certain driving conditions and areas.
- Vehicle-to-pedestrian communication (V2P): V2P communication gives cars the ability to detect and communicate with pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users. This technology can alert drivers to the presence of pedestrians on crosswalks or cyclists in bike lanes.
Challenges and Considerations
While technology can help to significantly reduce vehicle accidents, there’s still a few challenges which need to be thought of:
- Cybersecurity: Due to more connectivity to the internet, the more automated the vehicle is the higher the chance of security breaches may occur.
- Cost and accessibility: Vehicles which feature more technology tend to be more expensive to buy, making them more out of reach for those with lower income levels.
- Regulation and standardization: A lot of technology based vehicles need to pass through certain standards and regulations to ensure they’re safe for the user to drive.
- Technology malfunctions: Self-driving cars have the ability to reduce accidents on the road which can be caused by human error. While it’s said automated cars will reduce accidents, the downside is that it’s still technology based and if issues occur in the code it could cause the car to malfunction. Overall, these cars are said to help reduce the factors associated with impaired driving, drowsiness, and distracted driving.
Endnote
Car accidents happen each year, but some can be avoided. With the help of technology vehicles are becoming safer. Before purchasing a vehicle, make sure you do your research into what features you need in a car in order to make you confident driving it.
