Study: Collision avoidance tech reduces number of U.S. crashes

Aug. 23 (UPI) -- A new report indicates collision-avoidance systems equipped on vehicles in the United States have decreased the number of crashes and collisions leading to injuries.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released the findings of its study on Wednesday.

For the study, Jessica Cicchino, the institute's vice president for research, analyzed more than 5,000 accidents in 2015 involving collisions that lane-departure and blind-spot warning systems prevent.

The study found that lane-departure warnings lower rates of single-vehicle, sideswipe and head-on crashes of all types by 11 percent and also lower the rates of injury crashes by 21 percent.

Cicchino said that if all passenger vehicles were equipped with lane-departure warning technology in 2015, nearly 85,000 police-reported crashes and more than 55,000 injuries would have been prevented.

"This is the first evidence that lane departure warning is working to prevent crashes of passenger vehicles on U.S. roads," Cicchino said in a statement. "Given the large number of fatal crashes that involve unintentional lane departures, technology aimed at preventing them has the potential to save a lot of lives."

Other studies Cicchino conducted found that rear-view cameras can prevent about one in six backing crashes and that front crash prevention with auto-brake technology cuts the rate of front-to-rear crashes in half.

Blind-spot detection technology in 2015 lowered the rate of all lane-change crashes by 14 percent and the rate of lane-change crashes with injuries by 23 percent, Cicchino said.

"Blind spot detection systems work by providing additional information to the driver. It's still up to the driver to pay attention to that information and use it to make decisions," Cicchino added.