Future testing of active safety systems

To speed up the introduction of active safety systems, efficient standardized test programs are needed, including alternatives to test-track testing.

Advanced driver assistance (ADA) systems are increasingly becoming available in trucks and passenger vehicles. In recent years, developments in the field of ADA have shifted from increasing driver comfort toward increasing occupant safety. Moreover, safety functions are being added to comfort-oriented ADA systems, rather than adding new safety systems to the vehicle. Comfort systems such as cruise control are extended via adaptive cruise control (ACC) to pre-crash braking systems, and will be extended to collision avoidance systems in the future. Furthermore, car-to-car (C2C) and car-to-infrastructure (C2I) communication are being integrated in intelligent vehicle safety (IVS) systems.

Although strong efforts in increasing the passive safety of vehicles have resulted in a decreasing number of fatalities in Europe, the current developments in IVS systems are needed to reduce the number of fatalities even further. However, a large penetration of IVS systems and C2C or C2I communication in the vehicle fleet is not to be expected in the next 10 years.