POTENTIAL EFFECTIVENESS OF ELECTRONIC STABILITY PROGRAMS (ESP) - WHAT EUROPEAN FIELD STUDIES TELL US

ESP (Electronic Stability Programme) systems enable the stability of a car to be maintained during critical manoeuvres and to correct potential understeering or oversteering. As a result, ESP could help improve car safety by avoiding loss of vehicle control accidents as well as by reducing their severity or consequences.

This paper describes an evaluation of the potential effectiveness of ESP if it was installed more widely. It is based on data from the European Accident Causation Survey (or “EACS”) which contains information about 1,674 accidents in 5 European countries.

Analysis of the EACS data shows that in approximately 18% of all injury accidents and in 34% of fatal accidents, ESP would have a certain influence (either reducing the likelihood of an accident or avoiding the accident altogether). Where accident causation was identified as “loss of vehicle control”, ESP would have a certain benefit in 42% of cases with injury outcome and in 67% of the fatal crashes.