Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) Testing for the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).  NHTSA’s mission is to save lives, prevent injuries and reduce traffic-related health care and other economic costs.  The agency develops, promotes, and implements effective educational, engineering, and enforcement programs with the goal of ending vehicle crash tragedies and reducing economic costs associated with vehicle use and highway travel.

The New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) is a consumer information program.  Its major goals are to: (1) provide consumers with safety ratings and information to assist them in their vehicle purchasing decisions and (2) use market forces to motivate automobile manufacturers to design vehicles to a higher level of occupant protection.  To accomplish these goals, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) releases NCAP test results to the public as quickly as possible after vehicles are tested so that consumers can use this information when selecting a new vehicle to purchase. 

This project will allow NCAP to conduct crash avoidance tests on new vehicles to assess the performance of certain advanced technologies and provide consumers with this information.  Initially, testing will be conducted for Lane Departure Warning (LDW), Forward Crash Warning (FCW), Crash Imminent Braking (CIB), and Dynamic Brake Support (DBS) systems.  However, additional testing is expected and may include testing for Lane Keeping Support (LKS), Blind Spot Detection (BSD), Blind Spot Intervention (BSI), Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking (PAEB), Semi-Automatic Headlight Beam-Switching (SAHBS), Lower Beam Headlighting, Adaptive Driving Beams (ADB), Intersection Safety Assist (ISA) systems, and other Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) or automated vehicle technologies that the agency believes may provide safety potential; in addition to testing conducted with a motorcycle or bicycle as the surrogate vehicle, testing in dark or poorly lit conditions, and/or testing on curved roads.  Testing may also focus on Automatic Crash Notification (ACN), Advanced Automatic Crash Notification (AACN), Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication (V2V), or Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication.  Furthermore, additional research-type testing may be conducted in conjunction with any the technologies mentioned, to investigate test failures or test anomalies, or to refine or develop test procedures.