A new Approach to Evaluating New Vehicle Safety Technologies using Meta-Analysis

This study reports on a collaborative research program initiated by Euro NCAP that explores the possibility for evaluating new safety technology using multiple databases. The Validating Vehicle Safety through Meta-Analysis (VVSMA) group comprising a collaboration of government, industry, consumer organisations, and researchers. Aggregate analyses of data pooled from a number of jurisdictions were combined to evaluate low speed AEB City technology using a standard rear-end crash analysis format and the established Multiple National Database Study (MUNDS) approach. Quasi induced exposure was employed to control for extraneous factors. The results showed that AEB City technology led to significant reductions in crashes overall, although individual jurisdiction analyses failed generally to show significant reductions in rear-end crashes. A second study evaluating Lane Departure Warning (LDW) and/or Lane Keeping Assist (LKA) is currently underway and is expected to report on its findings early next year. With a substantial increase in available data, statistically significant real-world findings were obtained within much shorter timeframes. The meta-analysis approach using data from many jurisdictions is a unique contribution to the evaluation of vehicle safety technologies.