Advanced driver-assistance systems are technological features that are designed to increase the safety of driving a vehicle. These systems increase safety and reaction times to potential obstacles and dangerous scenarios, through early warning and automated systems. Some of these systems are built standard to certain vehicles, while aftermarket features and even entire systems are available to add at a later date to personalize the vehicle to the driver.

Technological innovation and the explosion of automation initiatives have greatly increased the popularity of safety systems in vehicles. A small sample of the available systems include the following:

According to Global Edge Soft, Future-generation ADAS will implement wireless network connectivity to enable Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I or V2X), furthering the growth in popularity of these systems. To put it simply, cars will be able to communicate with each other and through a great mainframe to provide a more safe, automated driving experience.

Although the growth of ADA system innovation has garnered exponential popularity, the market has experienced restraints in moving forward with this technology on a large scale. One of the largest constraints involves scalability and its immense cost. Getting these systems into more factory-built vehicles requires many costs on many levels of compliance, safety standards, and more.

Additionally, increasing the efficiency and performance of the systems comes with a steep price tag. Even with the current roadblocks, the expectation is that the ADAS market for the Asia-Pacific region will reach $9.69 billion by 2023 with a growth rate of 28.6% between 2018–2023.

This growth is also attributed to recently proposed mandates within the government regarding these driver assistance systems and the relationship between the systems and a lower number of road incidences.

Per Greg Smith Equipment, the early ADA systems began gaining popularity in the United States in the early 2000s, including:

Earlier, more mechanical technologies appeared in American vehicles as far back as the late 1970s, when the first electronic anti-lock braking systems were implemented.

The United States Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced in 2014 that all new vehicles under 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg) are required to have rear-view cameras by 2018. The catalyst for this change was the Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007 after a child was killed by a car backing out of a driveway.

In addition to these back-up cameras, vehicle manufacturers have developed several other technologies to boost safety. An example is the 2013 Cadillac ATS, which had General Motors’ first vibrating safety alert driver’s seat, which vibrated when a driver began to drift out of a lane or when oncoming danger was detected.

Most late-model vehicles have ADAS built into their original design and are updated as automobile manufacturers introduce new vehicle models and more features. These systems use multiple data inputs to enable useful safety features. Some of these data sources include automotive imaging, which is a series of high-quality systems of sensors that mimic and exceed the capabilities of the human eye in terms of 360-degree coverage, 3D object resolution, high visibility in difficult weather and lighting situations and real-time data.

LiDAR (light detection and ranging) adds more cameras and sensors for computer vision that transform outputs into 3D with the capability to discern between static and moving objects for added layers of blind-spot or bad-lighting situations.

Additional inputs can be obtained from other sources not part of the primary vehicle platform, including other vehicles (V2V) or vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2X) – WiFi, for example. Future-generation ADAS will continue to plug into wireless network connectivity to provide higher safety and monetary value by using V2V and V2X data.

The majority of road accidents are caused by human error. These advanced safety systems were developed to automate and enhance aspects of the driving experience to increase safety and safe driving habits. ADAS have been proven to reduce the number of fatalities on the road by also reducing the chance for human error.

These technologies can be split into two main categories: those that automate driving, such as automatic emergency braking systems, and those that help improve drivers’ awareness, such as lane departure warning systems.

The entire purpose of these safety systems is to increase road safety, reducing vehicular injuries by decreasing the overall number of traffic accidents. They also limit the number of insurance claims due to minor accidents in which there is property damage but no injuries.