The development of sophisticated electronic control systems has led in recent years to many new vehicles entering production that are equipped with various new primary safety features designed to avoid accidents. The assessment of the casualty reduction effectiveness of such features can, however, be very difficult. One reason for this is that when a primary safety feature is fully effective, there is no accident and no data for comparison. This project has attempted to assess the effectiveness of Electronic Stability Control (ESC). The project was carried out in two phases, phase 1 in 2008 and phase 2 in 2009. This is the report of phase 2 which has had three objectives: to develop a user-friendly software interface for the TRL copy of the STATS19 accident database; to obtain details of which car models had been fitted with ESC from the UK Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre; to make a practical assessment of the effectiveness of ESC based on analysis of STATS19 accident data. Each objective has been achieved. The effectiveness of ESC was analysed for the eight of the most numerous current car models, both individually and as a group. (Author/publisher)
Abstract