The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) believes that the increasing prevalence of accident avoidance systems in motor vehicles could eventually prevent over 48 percent of rear-end, run-off-the-road and lane change crashes.

A report recently released by the Integrated Vehicle Based Safety Systems (IVBSS) details the progress of a government initiative to speed up the introduction of these safety systems in vehicles with the goal of reducing crashes by as many as 1.8 million per year.

According to the government's research, about 3.6 million rear-end, road departure or lane change crashes occur each year. Of these 3.6 million, 27,500 crashes result in one or more fatalities.

The IVBSS two-phase initiative is hoping to show the technologies necessary to equip all new vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems that would help drivers avoid the most common types of deadly crashes. The U.S. DOT is seeking to partner with the automotive and commercial vehicle industries to speed up the introduction of integrated vehicle-based safety systems into the United States' vehicle fleet.

The first phase of the initiative began in November 2005 and was completed in April 2008, and a new report is available that describes accomplishments and progress made during Phase I. Phase I focused on system specification and design, development and construction of prototype vehicles.

This initiative, in partnership with the automotive industry, builds on completed and ongoing Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI) field operational tests as well as results from naturalistic driving studies. It will involve projects and studies that include private passenger vehicles and freight-carrying trucks. The IVBSS initiative intends to develop objective tests and criteria for performances of systems that simultaneously address rear-end, road departure and lane change crashes. Integration will increase the system effectiveness by improving system performance and improving the driver system interface.

Proposed systems may extend current Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) capabilities, increase control through vehicle braking and, ultimately, the capability to perform coordinated control and braking actions.