MUNDS: a new approach to evaluating safety technologies

Real-world evaluations of the safety benefits of new integrated safety technologies are hampered by the lack of sufficient data to assess early reliable benefits. To address this, a new approach was developed using a case-control, meta-analysis of coordinated national police data from Australia, Finland, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden and the UK, in assessing the benefits of Electronic Stability Control (ESC). The results showed that singlevehicle injury crash reductions varied between 21% and 54%, dependent on the speed zone of the crash and the road condition (significantly more effective in wet/icy road conditions than dry roads). For injury crashes involving more than one vehicle, ESC was twice as effective preventing crashes in high speed than lower speed zones. The findings using this new approach were consistent with those published by various equivalent individual studies, bearing in mind their wider international scope in terms of driving conditions and vehicle fleets studied. It was concluded that this new approach using a “prospective” meta-analysis method has the potential to expedite the process of evaluating emerging vehicle safety technologies that would otherwise be subject to much greater delays before sufficient evidence could be collected.