Analysis of road crashes and effectiveness of countermeasures using Indian in-depth crash data: To evaluate the potential of large-scale introduction of ADAS in the Indian vehicle fleet

Abstract

Road accidents are one of the major causes of deaths in India for people in the age group 5-24 years. More than 50% of the deaths occurring in Indian roads involve Vulnerable Road Users. Active safety systems are meant to prevent or mitigate the crashes. In order to evaluate and prioritize active safety systems or Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that suits best to the type of crashes that occur in India, crash causation mechanisms are identified by analyzing Indian in-depth crash database using the principle of Driving Reliability and Error Analysis Method. The presence of crash causation mechanism patterns could be used to identify the most frequent and common crash contributing factors. The analysis of the Indian in-depth accident database, Road Accident Sampling System India, it is observed that a single system might not address majority of the crashes. Instead some of the ADAS like Forward Collision Warning, Driver State Monitoring, Breath Alcohol Ignition Interlock devices and infrastructural improvements are suggested that could potentially avoid or mitigate a few major crashes based on the observations from a random sample of 500 crashes out of 3167 crashes. If all of the proposed systems and infrastructural improvements are adapted, about 54% of the crashes could be potentially avoided.