Data Show GM Automated Safety Systems Prevent Crashes

A nudge to NHTSA to prioritize or mandate certain safety systems?

A study of 3.7 million GM vehicles across 20 different models from 2013-2017 of automated safety systems show they work, according to GM, which is touting a zero-fatality automotive world at some point in the future. Fifteen different systems were evaluated using police report crash databases available to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute from 10 states.

After comparing the crash instances involving vehicles with and without active safety features, the study GM claims that certain features evaluated had an impact in preventing the types of crashes the features were designed to help prevent or mitigate.

Important Findings:

• Automatic Emergency Braking (aka Forward Automatic Braking) with Forward Collision Alert reduced rear-end striking crashes by 46%.
• Lane Keep Assist with Lane Departure Warning reduced lane departure-related crashes by 20%.
• Lane Change with Side Blind Zone Alert reduced lane change crashes by 26%.
• Rear Vision Camera alone, Rear Park Assist functionality, Rear Cross Traffic Alert (which nearly always includes the two previous backing features) and Reverse Automatic Braking (which includes all the previous backing features) produced, respectively, an estimated 21%, 38%, 52%, and 81% reduction in backing crashes.
• IntelliBeam and High-Intensity Discharge headlight features provided 35% and 21% reductions, respectively, in nighttime pedestrian/bicyclist/animal crashes, with a 49% reduction when offered together.

“This study is groundbreaking in terms of the broad range of vehicles and active safety and headlighting features examined,” said GM Safety Technical Fellow, Raymond Kiefer.

Executive Summary:

The GM active safety systems evaluated are addressing a wide range of common crashes that cause a large amount of injuries, property damage and cost to GM customers and society.

“A key finding of this work is that we can make substantial gains in safety through deployment of advanced driver assistance systems… In addition, we found that the more automated the system, the greater the benefits,” said UMTRI Research Associate Professor, Carol Flannagan. “… we hope that what we learned can motivate more widespread deployment of the most effective technologies.”