An increasing number of vehicles on the global market provide Assisted Driving technology, also referred to as SAE Level 2 partial automation, providing the opportunity for increased driver and road safety. It is the next step towards automated vehicles. To ensure its safety benefits consumers need to be aware and informed about the capabilities of these systems. With these systems being at the cutting edge of modern vehicle technology only limited vehicles currently have these systems fitted, although they are slowly being installed into lower priced mass-produced vehicles, and therefore few consumers have experience or know of the capability of these systems.

This paper investigates a way of assessing the driver support capabilities and HMI of vehicles with Assisted Driving systems to provide information of how the systems cope in different everyday scenarios which they may encounter. This paper outlines the development process of these assessments through both desk-based literature considerations and on track testing methods. Ten different vehicles where put through the assessment process to prove out the test method and offer information on the abilities of various systems. The vehicles are all produced by different manufactures and range from cheaper less capable to higher end advanced systems with the purpose of showing that within Assisted Driving systems there is vast difference in the performance outcome in both everyday driving and safety critical situations. The assessment of the systems will allow for a basis which will be expanded on for greater in-depth evaluation into the overall safety of the systems and ultimately the assessment of automated vehicles.

The assessment protocol has been developed in agreement with Euro NCAP for the evaluation of ten production vehicles available to buy late 2018, looking into developing the protocol for future testing and grading of new vehicles to be released with Assisted Driving technology.