One of the acronyms of the moment within the commercial fleet industry is ADAS: advanced driver assistance systems. If the term is unfamiliar, it’s likely that the components of it are not. Chances are your fleet already is employing some of those.

ADAS solutions tend to be divided into four general areas: braking, steering, warning and monitoring. Braking-related ADAS solutions include technologies such as automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control; steering-related functions include lane keep assist, lane centering and adaptive steering control; warning-oriented technologies include lane departure warning, forward collision warning and blind spot warning; and monitoring-centric solutions cover everything from driver-facing and road-facing cameras and camera-based mirror systems.

Toward the end of the last decade, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), recognized the need to boost adoption of these rapidly evolving systems and in 2020 launched the “Tech-Celerate Now” initiative to promote awareness and implementation of ADAS.

In January of this year, FMCSA released a report on the findings during Phase 1 (of two planned phases) of the initiative, which took place over the first 29 months of the Tech-Celerate Now program.

At the end of Phase 1, FMCSA found a slight difference in perception of individual elements of ADAS, between drivers and executives/management.

Within the four broad categories, the study revealed that:

• 85% of executives were mostly familiar with or had higher awareness of braking-related ADAS functions
• 68% of executives were mostly familiar with or had higher awareness of steering-related ADAS functions
• 95% of executives were mostly familiar with or had higher awareness of warning-related functions
• 89% of executives were mostly familiar with or had higher awareness of monitoring-related functions

On the driver front, meanwhile, awareness/familiarity levels were somewhat lower than they were for executives. However, those awareness/familiarity levels improved much more dramatically over the course of Phase 1:

• 76% of drivers were mostly familiar with or had higher awareness of braking-related functions, up from 55% after being reached by the Tech-Celerate program
• 62% were mostly familiar with or had higher awareness of steering-related elements, up from 38% pre-Tech-Celerate
• 78% were mostly familiar with or had higher awareness of warning-centric functions, up from 59% 
• 72% were mostly familiar with or had higher awareness of monitoring-centric elements, up from 59%

Overall, awareness among drivers improved on average across all ADAS functions, rising from 52% to 72%.

What’s more, ADAS adoption levels among executives increased to 26.6% from 23.7% during Tech-Celerate Phase 1. Among drivers, that increase was more pronounced, rising to 18.8%, versus 12.8% adoption prior to the program.

It’s clear from those findings that getting drivers on board needs to be an area of significant focus, as their awareness and acceptance of ADAS increases dramatically with a concerted educational outreach.

The biggest barrier to driver acceptance of the systems right now is the perception that their control is compromised — 24% of driver respondents reported that. Because of that, fleet managers might be more hesitant to adopt certain ADAS components for fear that it might impact driver recruitment in an already difficult hiring and retention environment.

But on the positive side, one thing managers and drivers do agree on is that a major attraction for implementing ADAS is lower insurance premiums.

Safer fleets, after all, mean greater savings, paying dividends across an operation and enhancing its bottom line.