Advanced driver assistance systems in combination with new preventive safety systems offer great potential for avoiding accidents, reducing accident severity and increasing occupant protection. This paper presents the activities in this field at the Mercedes Car Group (MCG). Driver assistance systems can be divided into systems that supply the driver with information during normal driving, systems that warn the driver when the probability of an accident increases, systems that assist the driver actively in avoiding an impending accident, and finally autonomously intervening systems. A special case of an intervention system is PRE-SAFE: developed and first introduced by the MCG in 2002, PRE-SAFE is a system that acts in the intervention phase. PRE-SAFE has opened up new possibilities for vehicle safety by shifting the paradigm from the formerly separate fields of active and passive safety to an integral view of these two fields. The future task is to enhance the elements of driver assistance systems and to integrate them in a comprehensive system. Since most of the current systems have no or only little information about the vehicle's surrounding, new sensors providing such information (cameras, 24-GHz radar) are especially needed. How can driver assistance systems be enhanced on the basis of additional and more precise sensor information? Firstly, the driver can be informed and warned much more selectively and accurately. Secondly, systems that act in the assistance phase can be activated more often and provide much more precise support. For instance, BAS activation and support can take objects in front of the vehicle into account to avoid or mitigate a collision. Thirdly, in the intervention or PRE-SAFE phase, new occupant protection systems can be activated if an imminent and unavoidable collision is detected. Additionally, it might be possible to apply the brakes automatically in such a case to reduce the collision energy, which is also considered a contributing factor to crash compatibility.
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