4. Driver Assistance and Road Safety

In order to make any statements about the effect of advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs) on road safety, it is important to understand the accidents that happen. In 1970, 21,332 people were killed on German roads (West Germany). In 2013, 3,339 people were killed on the roads. The number of motor vehicles in Germany increased during this time: from 16.8 to 53.8 million. In order to get a better understanding of accident statistics, a shift of focus is required from the general view obtained from a country’s accident statistics to detailed analysis of the accidents that happen. This field extends from the representative surveys of the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), based on road accident reports, to the in-depth analyses of different stakeholders on road safety. Accident analysis was carried out for cars, trucks, buses, and powered two-wheelers based on the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) and the German insurers’ accident database (UDB). The safety potential of advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs) can be ascertained in a variety of ways. For the results here, an alternative, “what if” method, was used in order to quantify the effect of different generic ADASs for cars, trucks, and buses.