This paper describes a basic framework for Safety Impact Methodologies (SIM) to estimate potential safety benefits of pre-production advanced Driver Assistance Systems (DAS). A common flow-chart, showing the interaction between data usage, crash scenarios development, model development, testing, data generation, and benefits estimation activities, is used to describe the basic framework. Although the framework applies to all types of evaluation of DAS, this paper focuses on those aspects that support evaluation of pre-production systems.

The paper then describes three approaches to implementing the SIM framework for pre-production systems. Two of these approaches describe effectiveness in terms of reduction in number of crashes with the system active. The third approach describes the effectiveness in terms of fatality and injury reduction, rather than estimating crashes avoided.

The paper concludes with descriptions of how the three approaches are being implemented in the SIMs that are being developed by the four teams participating in NHTSA’s Advanced Crash Avoidance Technology (ACAT) program. The paper also includes brief descriptions of other benefits evaluations as a means of highlighting how the framework accommodates evaluation of production systems and near-production systems as well as pre-production systems.

The framework developed in this paper provides a cornerstone for development of safety impact methodologies for evaluating pre-production driver assistance systems and for comparisons of methodologies that are used to evaluate production and near-production systems.