Lane departure warning, a technology designed to address an often-fatal type of crash, is preventing crashes on U.S. roads, according to research by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS).
Results indicate that lane departure warning lowers rates of single-vehicle, sideswipe and head-on crashes of all severities by 11% and lowers the rates of injury crashes of the same types by 21%. According to the study, that means that if all passenger vehicles had been equipped with lane departure warning, nearly 85,000 police-reported crashes and more than 55,000 injuries would have been prevented in 2015.
“This is the first evidence that lane departure warning is working to prevent crashes of passenger vehicles on U.S. roads,” said Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president for research. “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.”
A separate study shows that blind spot detection is also yielding benefits when it comes to preventing lane-change crashes. The studies are the latest in a series by Cicchino that evaluates different crash avoidance features by looking at data from police-reported crashes.
Cicchino’s previous studies found that front crash prevention with autobrake cuts the rate of front-to-rear crashes in half and that rearview cameras can prevent about 1 in 6 backing crashes.
