How do we make travel safer?
Getting from Point A to Point B has never been easier or quicker, with smartphone applications putting routes and mobility options at our fingertips. But do Americans who engage in long daily commutes, face tough winter road conditions and trust rideshare services to get them where they want to go feel safe? And what about pedestrians and bicyclists – how concerned are they about being involved in a collision with a vehicle?
To answer these questions, AEye teamed up with Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE) to conduct a Safer Mobility Survey – querying 1,095 U.S. adults in November 2022 to gauge their views on road safety for all road users, including drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists. The results of the survey, which were jointly released during a special event at CES 2023 in Las Vegas, revealed critical insights into how the average U.S. citizen feels about road safety and vehicle technologies. This information comes amidst a 16-year high in annual vehicle collision fatalities, with more than 42,000 such occurrences taking place in 2021, creating an urgent need for change. Here are key takeaways from the survey.
Technology makes drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists feel safer
The survey found that more than 75% of drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists worry about being involved in a collision, but believe technology plays a key role in improving road safety. According to the survey data, 82% of respondents feel safer with active ADAS technology in vehicles, and 78% believe technology is important in solving issues pertaining to safety. Out of the numerous ADAS applications powered by lidar or other component technology, blind spot monitoring was selected as the most important ADAS feature among respondents, followed by forward collision and object detection warnings.
This public sentiment favoring ADAS technology is supported by national studies on the effectiveness of ADAS technologies in curbing accidents. According to research by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, blind spot detection has helped reduce lane change crashes by 14% – a number that’s expected to increase as ADAS-enabling technologies – such as software-defined lidar – continue to be implemented by OEMs in both passenger and commercial vehicles.
Pedestrian safety is in-demand
Meanwhile, pedestrians and bicyclists say they want their cities to do more to protect them. When asked about how concerned they are about being struck by a vehicle, 78% of respondents said that they are concerned: 58% listed improving pedestrian and crosswalk safety as their highest mobility-related priority, while only 13% of respondents said their city or town was doing enough to address their safety. Clearly, there is work to be done here, and municipalities need to heighten their focus on and investment into pedestrian and bicyclist safety.
Taking action
At AEye, our vision for a safer future addresses these critical concerns. We created a unique software-defined lidar system that both helps vehicles safely navigate roadways and powers ITS solutions to accurately detect and track objects on the road in real-time, bolstering the implementation of ADAS and smart infrastructure that protect drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists alike.
An accident can take place anywhere – on the open highway, in dense, slow-moving urban environments, at city intersections, and in rain or shine. To address these varied scenarios, the automotive industry and local, regional and state transportation agencies need a robust platform that can accurately detect and track road users of all types in all weather or lighting conditions, and dynamically adapt its scan patterns and field of view depending upon the use case. AEye’s AEye’s 4Sight™ Intelligent Sensing Platform offers offers such a solution, using an adaptive sensor-based operating system to enable early, accurate detection for safe autonomy and smart cities.
Whether the task at hand requires seeing beyond the limitations of cameras and radar, such as in low light or reflective situations, or quickly recognizing objects of interest in an urban environment, such as a bicyclist in a car’s blind spot, AEye’s technology can assist with making mobility safer for all.