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As you take the test drive, you might feel overwhelmed by the number of features being explained—speed adjustment, automatic braking, adaptive cruise control, curve adaptation, lane centering, and traffic monitoring assistance—all intended to improve safety and convenience. But with so many controls, you may wonder if having more features leads to a more comfortable and safer driving experience.
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) like Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) are designed to prevent or reduce the severity of crashes and create an easier driving experience, but they can also add complexity and confusion. When you are still figuring out basics like adjusting the air conditioning or radio, it may feel like these technologies create a new layer of distraction rather than relief. You may even wonder if these features will ever feel intuitive and enhance rather than detract from your driving experience.
A recent study conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) found that more partial automation systems in vehicles, like ACC, offer little evidence of crash prevention benefits, while AEB systems have proven to reduce crash rates slightly. The IIHS and HLDI tested BMW and Nissan vehicles equipped with partial automation to confirm that the benefits are marginal across the vehicular market, even on highways and high-speed roads where these systems are more likely to be engaged. The study concluded that we should not equate partial automation with enhanced safety. ADAS systems, like lane-centering, may feel more convenient for drivers but do not necessarily enhance the vehicle’s safety.
Human Factors and Automated Features
The study of human factors explains how people interact with a variety of mechanical systems, environments, and technologies while focusing on optimizing safety, performance, and comfort. It involves understanding human capabilities like perception, cognition, motor skills, and limitations like fatigue, distraction, or reaction time to create technologies that can effectively accommodate these characteristics. In the event of driving, the human factors of attention and distraction, reaction time, and cognitive load (how much information a driver can process simultaneously) are essential for the driver’s safety. As partial automation features (like ACC) are integrated into new vehicle models, human factors help balance automation with human oversight.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, any activity that requires a driver to take their eyes off the road for more than 2-second intervals for more than 12 seconds total is considered distracted driving, and approximately 8-9% of all fatal vehicle collisions and 3,000 deaths are caused by distracted driving, annually.
With these statistics in mind, it is important to keep your eyes on the road while adjusting the ADAS systems in your car is important. After driving your new car for a bit, take note of which features you can safely manage while driving. If features are too distracting, refer to the driver’s manual or take your vehicle back to the dealership to disable them. As with any new technology, allow yourself time to get accustomed to the controls safely, and over time, these actions will become more intuitive.
CED’s Transportation Group of engineers is well-equipped to accurately analyze vehicular crashes, particularly those involving technological advancements in vehicular systems and human factors. With extensive training and expertise, our team can recover and thoroughly analyze vehicle data, which is critical in determining the cause of an accident.
The feature image is created by Microsoft Copilot.
