Advanced Driver Assistance Systems: Insights into Performance Across Driver, Roadway, and Environmental Conditions

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems have been shown to reduce crashes and injuries, with performance varying across real-world conditions. The latest PARTS study combines vehicle equipment data for 98 million passenger vehicles from nine automakers — representing more than 80% of the U.S. passenger vehicle market — with police-reported crash data from 16 states. The study uses this dataset to examine how the proportion of vehicles equipped with certain ADAS features vary across driver, roadway, environmental and non-motorist conditions in system-relevant crashes. Rather than estimating overall system effectiveness, the study identifies where ADAS-equipped vehicles are overrepresented or underrepresented, helping identify conditions that may warrant further research and potential system improvement.

Key findings:

• Automatic Emergency Braking: Overrepresentation of equipped vehicles was observed in front-to-rear striking crashes involving older drivers, curved roadways and winter or low-traction road surfaces.
• Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking: Crashes involving non-motorists aged 15–19 emerged as a key area for further research.
• Lane Assistance Features: Older drivers and roadways with three lanes or five or more lanes were associated with higher proportions of equipped vehicles in single-vehicle road-departure crashes. Why It Matters By pairing large-scale vehicle equipment data with police-reported crash information, this study helps identify conditions where patterns among ADAS-equipped vehicles differ in the real world and where future research, system refinement, and infrastructure improvements may have the greatest potential to improve traffic safety.