AAA study: Advanced driver assists could save 8,000 lives each year — if we used them right

As advanced driver assistance systems become more common, researchers are putting more work into quantifying their ability to reduce vehicle crashes, as well as vehicle occupant and pedestrian injuries and fatalities. The American Automotive Association's (AAA) Foundation for Traffic Safety, a publicly supported charitable research and educational arm, is the latest to try, by supporting researchers at the University of North Carolina. The researchers worked up models for "how many motor vehicle crashes, injuries, and deaths ADAS technologies are likely to prevent over the next 30 years, while acknowledging and taking into account the many factors likely to influence them." Using crash data from 2017-2019 — the pre-Covid era with a much lower fatality rate — as a baseline, the predictions are that through 2050, ADAS tech could prevent 27 million crashes, 14 million injuries, and 250,000 deaths. 

That equates to a 16% decline in both crashes and injuries, and a 22% decline in fatalities — another 8,333 people per year on average that make it home alive.

The report titled "Examining the Safety Benefits of Partial Vehicle Automation Technologies in an Uncertain Future" admits that these figures "are subject to substantial uncertainty." No one knows what the vehicle landscape and the ramp-up of ADAS technologies will look like, not to mention how the American road system will develop, from physical quality to integrated safety features. In 2020, Consumer Reports wrote that its analysis found current safety tech could prevent more than 20,000 fatalities every year if they all came standard on every light-duty vehicle sold. In 2021, the Highway Loss Data Institute estimated that only half the registered cars in the U.S. would only have backup cameras and rear parking sensors as an advanced assistance suite; the increasing age of the U.S. fleet works against ADAS adoption. The HLDS believed just 17% of cars would be fitted with adaptive cruise control, just 13% with adaptive headlights.