Development of an Emergency Stop Assist System with Pull-Over Function

Although accidents caused by drivers’ physical condition account for only a small percentage of all traffic accidents, they are highly likely to lead to serious accidents if they do occur, so speedy actions from both product and social rule aspects are desirable. In response, many companies have developed and commercialized emergency stop assist system which stops in the lane, and also the development and discussion of emergency stop assist systems with pull-over function is being promoted in several countries in order to ensure the safety of the own vehicle, the following vehicle, and the evacuation of passengers, and to shorten the rescue time. Regarding Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in the market, the ones which are categorized as Lv.2 by SAE are mainstream, so the development of emergency stop assist systems with pull-over function that utilize Lv.2 ADAS is required in order to spread the use of it. In this paper, we describe the basic design and concept of an emergency stop assist system using Lv.2 ADAS which is based on the premise that the driver must be appropriately involved to ensure safety. This paper also describes an approach to increase the acceptability of the emergency stop assist system by switching between pull-over and stop-in-the-lane according to the situation, and also discusses the technology for judging whether the driver is abnormal or not in the Lv.2 ADAS system in a system that allows hands-off operation under certain circumstances, and the notification to surrounding vehicles in consideration of regional characteristics.