drivemecrazy

The fact that road mishaps are happening frequently makes auto manufacturers worry about the safety features that their vehicles are offering. This is the reason why most auto makers continue to develop safety features so as to reduce the number of fatal crashes. Today, they have come up with crash-avoidance technologies that they claim to have the capability to improve the chances of avoiding collisions. Some include technologies that have the capacity to give an audible or visual warning to command the driver to do corrective measures. There are even those which have the capability to automatically apply the brakes or guide back into the proper lane a drifting car.

However, even the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) is getting a hard time to tell whether such is effective or not because its use is not widespread yet. Still, the IIHS just analyzed five crash-avoidance technologies: forward collision warning, emergency brake assist, lane departure warning, blind spot detection, and adaptive headlights.

Of these features, the IIHS sees the forward collision warning and the lane departure warning as the most promising features. The forward collision warning feature gives the driver a warning whenever it detects that the vehicle is about to hit an object directly in front of it. On the other hand, the lane departure warning tells the driver if they are drifting out of the lane.

Based on the information gathered by the IIHS from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and General Estimates System, the IIHS identified the types of crashes that all these features have been designed to prevent. In period of four years, which is from 2002 to 2006, there is a possibility that the 20 million frontal collisions could be reduced in half with the aid of the forward collision warning. Though it could not totally erase incidents of frontal collisions, a 50 percent reduction is a good deal. On the other hand, the lane departure warning could prevent up to 100,000 crashes and 2,500 fatalities per year.

The IIHS also announced that of the five safety features they have been analyzing, it is the blind spot detection that shows the least potential. This safety feature alerts the drivers of their blind spots. This conclusion is not because that its capabilities are ineffective but because there are not much fatal crashes that involve vehicles in blind spots.