Model of fleet-wide safety benefits of Lane Departure Warning systems

This study examines the potential effectiveness of Lane Departure Warning (LDW) systems, an active safety system that aims to prevent or mitigate unintended departures from the lane while driving. Real-world departure crashes were extracted from a nationally representative sample of collisions in the U.S. from 2007 to 2011. The 2,848 collisions corresponded to 741,646 crashes. Because driver characteristics, e.g. steering input and reaction times, are unknown in retrospective crash databases, multiple simulations were performed for each crash, each with different driver characteristics. In addition, we developed a statistical framework for estimating initial vehicle conditions, i.e. departure speed, departure angle, road radius of curvature, and shoulder width. Trajectories were simulated to estimate the expected number of crashes and injuries that could be prevented by LDW. The expected reduction in road departure crashes due to LDW is estimated to be 30.3%. The expected reduction in injuries that are caused by LDW applicable crashes is estimated to be 25.8%.