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As part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Light Vehicle Antilock Brake System (ABS) Research Program a study was conducted to examine driver crash avoidance behavior and the effects of ABS on drivers’ ability to avoid a collision in a crash-imminent situation. The test track study, described in detail in the SAE paper “Driver Crash Avoidance Behavior with ABS in an Intersection Incursion Scenario on Dry Versus Wet Pavement” [1], was designed to examine the effects of ABS versus conventional brakes, ABS brake pedal feedback level, and ABS instruction on driver behavior and crash avoidance performance. Exponent has obtained the electronic data collected by NHTSA in the dry pavement study and analyzed the steering inputs to better understand how drivers respond to emergency avoidance situations.

As a result of the development of Event Data Recorders (EDR) and the recent FMVSS regulation 49 CFR 563, today’s automobiles provide a limited subset of electronic data measurements of a vehicle’s state before and during a crash. Prior to this data, the only information available about the vehicle movements before or during a collision had come from physical evidence (e.g. tire marks), witnesses, aftermarket camera systems on vehicles, and ground-based cameras that were monitoring vehicle traffic or used for security surveillance. Today’s vehicles equipped with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have vehicle-based sensors that measure information about the environment around a vehicle including other vehicles, pedestrians, and fixed wayside objects.