Video: Crash Avoidance Systems

In fact, some cars are even able to warn you of a collision to come. We'll talk about how those systems work, and cover some of their implications with Mark Woirol, an automotive safety expert from Allstate. Mark, thanks for joining us today. Thanks, Kelsey. I appreciate you having me on. I'm a big fan what Cars.com does. So tell me about these systems. How do they work? What do they do? Well, there's a lot of different systems that are on the market. So when you look at safety systems in an automobile, you have crash avoidance systems, we have lane departure systems, we have had advanced headlight systems, we have backup systems that are in place, we have mitigation systems. So each one that are in the vehicles are set up to do a specifically a different task to protect. <v Kelsey>So are these systems? We've seen a lot of them in luxury vehicles. Are some of them coming out in non-luxury vehicles, in the Chevy's, the Toyotas, the Fords of the world? <v Mark>Yeah, they are. Typically, the higher-end vehicles have always been the ones that kind of start the ball rolling with these systems. But in today's marketplace, you can take the Ford Focus as a prime example, they have a low speed crash avoidance system that's built into the vehicle. They also have a system built into where the vehicle, such as Lexus a few years ago, it will park itself in a parallel park. Wow. So do these systems actually steer you away from an impending collision or do they just, they warn you? Do they stop you? How does that all work? <v Mark>There's vast differences between most of the systems. I'll give you two examples. So when you look at front driver systems that are out there for... You could have a low speed system or a low-impact braking system, and you have a high-speed system. So if I look at the Volvo system, which is called City Safe, it's made to where it crashes under 20 miles an hour through a laser and a camera are mounted in front of the rear-view mirror, it will track a car in front of it, and literally stop the vehicle from an impact. It's built for the urban environment. Whereas if you look at a high-speed systems, and I'll use BMW's system as a prime example, it's a four-phase system. Traveling at speed on a major highway, the system will warn you of an impending problem. Phase two, it will actually pre-charge the brakes to potentially stop. Phase three gets into the situation to where, okay, as a driver, you haven't done anything, so it's going to actually start to apply the brakes for about a second and a 1/2 to slow the vehicle down. And phase four of the system literally understands crash is imminent, we're gonna have an effect here. It will literally slow the car down, evasive braking to try to minimize the impact as well as reposition the vehicle and the people in the vehicle to help them from an injury standpoint. <v Kelsey>So what are all the implications of this? I mean, if your car's really trying to mitigate collisions, and you really idiot proof the car, well, aren't we just all gonna become more idiots behind the wheel? <v Mark>No, I think we all agree, Kelsey that the driver still is the one that's in control of the vehicle. At the end of the day, it's about giving additional tools to them so when they drive to make it safer. Allstate Insurance Company is one of the first companies to get behind airbags and putting them into vehicles as far as stability control. And our position is this is just another tool to help the driver be aware of the driving public. <v Kelsey>So it sounds like you agree with the statement that the number one safety feature in a car is really the driver? <v Mark>Absolutely. <v Narrator>For more car-related news, go to Cars.com, or our blog KickingTires.net.