This document describes the state-of-the-art of prospective methods for assessing the safety performance of vehicle-integrated active safety technologies by virtual simulation. The document describes how prospective assessment of vehicle-integrated technologies provides a prediction on how advanced vehicle safety technology will perform on the roads in real traffic. The focus is on the assessment of the technology as whole and not of single components of the technology (e.g. sensors).

The described assessment approach is limited to “vehicle-integrated” technology and does not consider technologies operating off-board. The virtual simulation method per se is not limited to a certain vehicle type. The assessment approach discussed in this document focuses accident avoidance and the technology’s contribution to the mitigation of the consequences. Safety technologies that act in the in-crash or the post-crash phase are not explicitly addressed by the method, although the output from prospective assessments of crash avoidance technologies can be considered as an important input to determine the overall consequences of a crash.

The method is intended as an overall reference for safety performance assessment studies of pre-crash technologies by virtual simulation. The method can be applied at all stages of technology development and in assessment after the market introduction, in which a wide range of stakeholders (manufactures, insurer, governmental organisation, consumer rating organisation) could apply the method.