Driver assist or intelligent vehicle safety systems are emerging as a crucial technology for improving auto safety and to lower society\'s cost of auto accidents.
Driver assist systems or intelligent vehicle safety systems are emerging rapidly due to their potential to lower many of the negative aspects related to transportation-accidents, injuries, deaths and the many elements of economic loss from accidents.
The automobile industry provides tremendous value to all the segments of the modern society, but therte are significant negative aspects of automobile usage such as accidents. Most of the time, the crashes take place due to driver errors such as their inattention while driving. In fact, over 90 per cent of the accidents are caused by driver errors. The costs of accidents are staggering (Table 1).
The most important data points are: the average cost per accident (US$ 36,500) and the overall accident costs (2.3 per cent of GDP of the US). The cost includes all of society's costs such as property damage, healthcare, salary loss and other related costs. The accident statistics for the Western European countries are similar, but the overall accident cost as a percentage of GDP (1.5-2 per cent) is less than that of the US. However, since the GDP of the Western Europe is higher than that of the US, the absolute yearly accidents of both the regions are more or less the same.
Driver assist systems are designed to lower the frequency of the most common types of accidents by eliminating many driver mistakes. Taking into consideration the huge costs to the society due to accidents, the investments on driver assist systems will definitely be fruitful. However, the high initial price of each driver assist system means that the usage penetration will take a decade or more until they move from luxury cars to entry cars. Society's ROI on driver assist systems is high enough to warrant a faster deployment based on incentives to auto buyers and manufacturers.
Driver assist systems are designed to bring down the occurrence of the most common accidents and
• Improve driver response time via early danger detection and notification
• Improve safety margins through driving hazard warnings
• Enhance driver vision at night, in fog, for blind spots and in curves
• Improve driver skills by limiting driver errors and overreaction
• Counteract distraction from infotainment and mobile devices
• Improve convenience by making the drive less tiring, less boring and less stressful
• Mitigate severity of an accident when a crash is inevitable
Current driver assist systems are standalone systems that target the most common types of accidents. Future systems will be more integrated and will enable communication with other vehicles and roadway infrastructures such as intersection systems.
Availability of driver assist systems is growing rapidly across the world. Telematics Research Group tracks the availability of most driver assist systems for many countries of the world. Figure 1 shows the availability of camera and ultrasonic park assistance (UPA) systems for key regions of the world. Ultrasonic park assist is more prevalent than any other driver assist systems due to its low cost. Western Europe has the highest ultrasound parking availability than any other region in the world, with over 73 per cent of the vehicles manufactured in 2008 having such systems as an option or standard equipment.
Japan, due to its large-scale usage of navigation systems, has the highest availability of camera-based parking assist systems with nearly 33 per cent of cars manufactured in 2008 containing those systems. In the US, camera park availability has grown phenomenally, from 9 per cent in 2006 to nearly 31 per cent in 2008. Surprisingly, China has high parking assist availability as 16 per cent of its 2008 car models are equipped with camera park assist systems and 60 per cent with ultrasound parking assist systems.
Figure 2 illustrates the availability of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Lane Departure Warning (LDW) systems. Japan is the leader in using ACC as nearly 18 per cent of the 2008 models have ACC as option or standard equipment. Japan was also the leader in LDW system, but in 2008, USA surpassed Japan with 5.7 per cent of models having LDW systems as optional or standard equipment, compared to 4.1 per cent in Japan.
Currently, the UPA is the most common driver assist system due to its low price. Over 10 million ultrasound parking systems were sold worldwide in 2007 and this is expected to touch nearly 30 million units by 2012 and over 53 million systems by 2020.
Figure 4 shows TRG's projected worldwide sales of currently available OEM supplied driver assist systems. Aftermarket systems are not included in these estimates. Forecasts for 2015 and 2020 are also included, but such forecasts are speculative due to rapid technological changes and advances. Note that many of today's separate driver assist systems will become integrated systems in the next five years, and will retain current functionalities, but with significant capability improvements.
The growing use of navigation systems will increase the usage of camera-based parking assist systems as they can use the navigation display to show the camera view. The functionality of camera-based parking assist systems will increase substantially in the next decade. The first step is the emerging "birds-eye" view of the car in relation to the parking space. This is a synthesised top-down view, which is very useful for the driver. Self-parking systems are also emerging and as the technology improves, they will take an increasing share of camera-based PA systems. Worldwide camera parking assist system sales topped 2.2 million units in 2007 and are expected to reach 7.7 million units by 2012 and over 25 million systems by 2020.
ACC systems are the third most popular driver assist device today with estimated sales of nearly 1.3 million units in 2007, with a forecast of 7.4 million units by 2012 and 34 million units by 2020. During this period, the ACC functionality will increase mostly from the current highway-speed ACC to stop-and-go ACC in a few years and then to cooperative ACC by 2015. By 2020, many ACC systems are likely to include platoon driving features where the ACC systems allow multiple cars to move as a group with minimal spacing between them.
LDW systems will also see increasing functionality. Lane Keeping Assist functionality is already appearing and Lane Changing Assist functions will soon be added. Blind Spot Detection (BSD) functionality is also likely to be added to LDW systems in the future. Standalone BSD systems will remain viable due to their low price. LDW system sales were less than 0.2 million units in 2007, but are expected to increase to 3.8 million by 2012 and over 36 million units by 2020. BSD systems are just emerging and had sales of only 23,000 systems in 2007. Strong BSD growth is projected to reach 2.8 million units by 2012 and over 37 million systems by 2020.
Driver assist systems are in their infancy and will undergo tremendous technological advances and strong sales growth in the future. The previous market forecasts are based on normal development from luxury car entry to mid-range cars and eventually to entry level cars when prices have declined due to volume production. The previous forecasts will become too low if incentives are available to fast-track the deployment of driver assist systems. It will be interesting to see if any countries will put such incentives in place for the auto buyers and/or auto manufacturers.
Figure 3 gives a qualitative view of the likely evolution of the various driver assist system categories. Map-based driver assist or Advanced Driver Assist Systems (ADAS) are emerging and will become important in the next few years. ADAS uses the map as a "sensor", in the sense that the digital map provides detailed information about lanes, curves, road slopes and many other useful attributes.
Driver assist systems have the potential to significantly lower many of the negative aspects related to automotive driving. Some driver assist systems have the potential to improve gas mileage of the automobiles. As the numbers of ACC systems reach about 10 per cent market penetration, such systems will even the traffic flow and minimise the stop-and-go pattern that wastes gas. ADAS systems that have knowledge of curves and hills also have substantial potential to improve gas mileage.
EgilJuliussenis the principal analyst and Co-founder of Telematics Research Group. He holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He has more than 25 years of experience in Market and Technology Analysis and Forecasting in Information Technology, Wireless Communications and Vehicle Telematics. In the last 30 years, Dr. Juliussen's work includes over 500 papers, reports and conference presentations.
