An empirically based process for estimating safety benefits

Burgett, August; Srinivasan, Gowrishankar; Ranganathan, Raja

Affiliations

¹URC Enterprise

²Rainbow Technology

Abstract

The advent of new crash prevention technologies has made it necessary to develop new methodologies capable of estimating safety benefits before they are introduced in the market. This paper describes the development of one such empirically based methodology for estimating safety benefits.

The developed methodology uses detailed engineering descriptions of the crash prevention system performance, in conjunction with a universal description of crash causal factors and resulting relevant crash types. This study also establishes objective tests to evaluate systems; a brake-assist system is used to describe the process.

Crash data files such as the General Estimate System (GES) and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) are used to develop Measures of Performance (MOP) and are used as the basis for objective tests. Naturalistic driving data are used to estimate Exposure Ratio and to refine elements of the objective tests. Finally data from the objective tests are used to estimate benefits of the crash prevention system.

The process developed here has not been applied to a specific system. For that reason a hypothetical system is used as an example to demonstrate the data processing required to convert test outcomes to number of crashes that would be prevented. A generic brake-assist system is used as an example. This hypothetical example suggests that such a system could prevent 50% of rear-end crashes in which the following vehicle brakes to avoid crashing into a decelerating lead vehicle.

The new process developed here has not been applied at this time. Challenges that will arise during application are not addressed in detail in this paper.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv20/07-0139-W.pdf

Cited Works (4)

Year	Entry
2006	Dingus TA, Klauer SG, Neale VL, Petersen A, Lee SE, Sudweeks J, Perez MA, Hankey J, Ramsey D, Gupta S, Bucher C, Doerzaph ZR, Jermeland J, Knipling RR. The 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study: Phase II – Results of the 100-Car Field Experiment. Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; April 2006. Report No. DOT HS 810 593.
2005	Burgett AL, Srinivasan GP. Use of the crash prevention boundary methodology to describe the performance of adaptive cruise control systems. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 6-9, 2005; Washington, DC.
2003	Burgett AL, Miller RJ Jr. Using parameter optimization to characterize driver’s performance in rearend driving scenarios. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 19-22, 2003; Nagoya, Japan.
2007	Burgett A, Ranganathan R, Srinivasan G. Development of objective tests for evaluating lane-keeping/road departure driver assistance systems. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 18-21, 2007; Lyon, France.

Cited By (2)

Year	Entry
2009	Aoki H, Aga M, Miichi Y, Matsuo Y. Development of a safety impact estimation tool for advanced safety technologies. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.
2009	Carter AA, Burgett A, Srinivasan G, Ranganathan R. Safety impact methodology (SIM): evaluation of pre-production systems. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.