Comprehensive Target Populations for Current Active Safety Systems Using National Crash Databases

Methods

Using 4 databases (National Automotive Sampling System–General Estimates System [NASS-GES], NASS Crashworthiness Data System [NASS-CDS], Fatality Analysis Reporting System [FARS], and National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey [NMVCCS]) the scenarios developed in this study can be used to quantify the number of police-reported crashes, seriously injured occupants, and fatalities that are applicable to proposed active safety systems.

In this article, we use the precrash scenarios to identify the target populations for FCW, pedestrian crash avoidance systems (PCAS), lane departure warning (LDW), and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) systems. Crash scenarios were derived using precrash variables (critical event, accident type, precrash movement) present in all 4 data sources. Results and Conclusions: This study found that these active safety systems could potentially mitigate approximately 1 in 5 of all severity and serious injury crashes in the United States and 26 percent of fatal crashes.

Annually, this corresponds to 1.2 million all severity, 14,353 serious injury (MAIS 3+), and 7412 fatal crashes. In addition, we provide the source code for the crash scenarios as an appendix (see online supplement) to this article so that researchers can use the crash scenarios in future research.