Data on crashes involving vehicles with ADAS.

27 July 2022

Opinion piece from ETSC.

Last month NHTSA, a US government agency, released its first set of data on crashes involving vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).  In the ten months since mandatory reporting began, there have been around 400 reported incidents.  How about in Europe, a market comparable in size?  Nobody knows.

There is no equivalent to NHTSA that covers the whole of the EU.  A car approved in one Member State can be sold across the EU.  For example, a car approved in the Netherlands by RDW, such as a Tesla, can be sold in any EU country. The new Mercedes Level 3 automated low-speed driving system was approved by the KBA in Germany for the German market, and they will most likely be responsible for EU-wide approval of the Mercedes system too.

Reporting and investigating crashes is getting even more important now that computers are taking over some driving tasks.  If computer code or sensors cause a problem that contributed to a crash, we need to know, so we can prevent future problems