One leading OEM is taking a further step in crash avoidance by utilising data from its customers cars to better enhance safety.
Long a pioneer in advanced safety technology, Mercedes-Benz is stepping up its advanced driver assistance systems to utilise sensor and video data from the customer fleet to recognise different road users and atypical traffic situations.
From the end of July 2025 it will include the data in its push for “Vision Zero”, the goal of zero road fatalities in the European Union by 2050.
The company has been at the forefornt of ADAS systems and was one of the first OEMs to include AEB braking as standard and to develop higher levels of ADAS.
Many of these systems are not yet operational in Australia vehicles from the company due to a lag in automated driving laws compered to the EU and US.
Mercedes Benz says said the increasing complexity of road traffic places high demands on ADAS system and automated driving functions in vehicles.
“The more realistically the systems are trained, the safer and more reliably they behave in everyday life. Until now, Mercedes-Benz has relied on data collected from test vehicles worldwide. In order to train automated systems to reliably recognise all types of road users and situations, a wide range of real-life traffic data is required.”
It hopes the additional data will enable the systems to react even better to uncommon groups of people such as children, pedestrians, cyclists and people with restricted mobility along with unusual traffic situations, such as temporary traffic routing or unusual behaviour of road users.
Privacy Protections
Mercedes-Benz Board Member for Integrity, Governance and Sustainability Renata Jungo Brüngger says the data was only collected with the consent of the vehicle owner and was fully transparent about e procedure and the use and processing of the data.
“Our vision is clear: Road traffic must be safe for everyone. The prerequisite for this is high-quality data. That’s because driving assistance systems and automated functions can only react reliably if they have been trained with realistic and diverse data. In future, this will be based on data from customer vehicles. Our data protection standards are just as high as our safety standards. Our customers and all road users can rely on this. This is the basis for the acceptance of automated and connected driving.”
Focus on data protection
The company follows the principles of “Privacy by Design” and “Privacy by Default”: Data protection and IT security are already firmly anchored in product development.
The data from the customer vehicles is only stored temporarily based on location or events – for example during heavy braking manoeuvres – and then selectively transmitted to the Mercedes-Benz back end. There, the data is usually anonymised and separated from the vehicle identification.