Performance assessment in a “lane departure” scenario of impending collision for an ADAS logic based on injury risk minimization

Road safety has currently a high importance for the automotive sector, paving the way to the development of future Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADASs) that involve braking and steering simultaneously for impact avoidance in case of impending collision. However, it is still unclear how new vehicle technologies acting on the steering angle will intervene in the case of an emergency to prevent crashes or to minimise their consequences. In this study, an “adaptive” in-vehicle intervention logic on braking and steering is applied to a critical “lane departure” scenario involving two vehicles. An ADAS on the Ego Vehicle implementing such logic activates itself to minimize Injury Risk (IR) for the occupants at each time step. The performance of the adaptive logic is thoroughly investigated by a software-in-the-loop approach that simulates various mutual positions of the vehicles starting from the beginning of the criticality, comparing the injury outcomes of the eventual crashes with those resulting from the intervention of an Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB).