Safety Technologies
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How Does Adaptive Cruise Control Maintain Distance with Radar?
Adaptive cruise control (ACC) is a driver assistance system that not only maintains the speed you set, but also monitors the vehicle ahead using radar and a camera, keeping the distance between you through automatic throttle and braking interventions…
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How Does Brake Assist Detect an Emergency, and Why Does It Multiply Pressure?
Brake assist (BAS/BA) is an active safety system that detects an emergency within milliseconds by monitoring the speed and force applied to the pedal during panic braking, and automatically raises the brake fluid pressure to maximum. It fills the gap…
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Does the Lane Keeping System Really Take Over the Steering?
Yes, it really takes hold of the wheel - but not literally. The Lane Keeping Assist (LKA) system is an active safety system that, if you drift out of the lane lines it reads with a front camera, applies torque to the steering wheel via an electric mo…
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What Does the Blind Spot Radar See, and What Does It Miss?
Blind spot radar is an active safety system that monitors vehicles in adjacent lanes using 77 GHz radar sensors hidden in the vehicle's rear corners, but it does not see everything: it does not always detect low radar cross-section targets such as pe…
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Why Does the Body Intentionally Deform? Crumple Zone Engineering
The crumple zone, meaning a deliberately deformable region, is a structural safety zone designed to absorb collision energy by intentionally crushing at the moment of impact. So our car being crushed is not a defect; quite the opposite, it is the eng…
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Where Does the Line Between Passive and Active Safety Begin?
Passive safety is the sum of the systems (crumple zones, seatbelt, airbag) that reduce injuries during and after a collision; active safety is the name for the systems (ABS, ESC, brake assist, driver assistance systems) that try to prevent the accide…
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How Does Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) Protect You from Collisions?
Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) is an active safety system that combines data from sensors such as radar, camera and lidar to calculate collision risk within milliseconds, and takes over braking itself if the driver fails to react in time. In othe…
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How Does Traction Control Detect Wheel Slip, and How Does It Limit Power?
Traction control (TCS) detects that a wheel is spinning freely and slipping during acceleration using data from the wheel speed sensors, and it regains lost grip by intervening with braking or engine torque reduction. ESC aims to prevent the car from…
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What Replaced the ABS Locking Brake, and What Does It Save?
ABS's job is not to shorten stopping distance on every surface; it is to prevent the wheels from locking during hard braking, allowing the driver to keep steering control in hand. On high-grip surfaces the distance may shorten or stay the same; on lo…
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How Does Electronic Stability Control Save You When Your Car Skids?
Electronic Stability Control (ESC; known as ESP on some brands) is an active safety system that detects when the car begins to skid using wheel speed, steering angle, and yaw sensors, then corrects the trajectory by limiting engine power and braking …
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The Inside Story of Crash Tests and How Euro NCAP Stars Are Awarded
The Euro NCAP star rating is a weighted evaluation of a car's crash protection and accident avoidance capability, summarized on a scale of 0 to 5 stars. In other words, those cars you see crashing and flipping over in videos are not the exam itself b…
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The 60 Milliseconds of a Collision: How Airbags and Seatbelts Work
In the first 60 milliseconds of a collision, the following happens in sequence: sensors detect the deceleration, the control module makes the decision, the seatbelt pretensioner removes the slack, the airbag inflates within 15-50 milliseconds, and th…
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