Questionnaire for building a scenario for vehicle active safety

Public authorities are well aware of the large tolls that society pays in terms of injuries and death in road accidents The importance that public institutions are giving to the issues of road safety and of the so called ITS, Intelligent Transportation Systems, are indicated � just to give an example - also by the very recent Memorandum of Cooperation on "Cooperative Systems in the Field of Intelligent Transport Systems" between the EC/DG INFSO and the Road Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Furthermore a very recent European Parliament report indicates the legislature's commitment to further improve road safety in the European Union.
Legislation, however, has acted up to date mainly to improve the situation by intervening in the so called "passive safety" (dealing with the components of the vehicle that help to protect occupants during a crash). Concerning "active safety" the interventions up to date are mainly concerned with the technology assisting the driver in the prevention of a crash.
Strong interests in the future of active safety in road transport are also expressed by insurance companies: see, e.g. the initiatives of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a US independent, nonprofit, scientific, and educational organization dedicated to reducing the losses - deaths, injuries, and property damage - from crashes on highways.
The question to be posed here is what type of scenario can be described for the diffusion of active safety features on road transport that will be able to really intervene to avoid collisions and other accidents such as out of road and others.
One has to recognise that a number of actions have been taken and are in progress both at national and international levels to sponsor R&D projects and other initiatives. As a matter of fact, as a result of the many successful R&D projects developed in the recent past, one can acknowledge the introduction of new safety features on vehicles proposed by an increasing number of car manufacturers, such a ADAS, automatic brain in car following, automated parking, and others. However the intervention are not yet dealing with the problem of full collision avoidance.
The ERSEC project by developing a very precise measuring systems of the vehicle position on the road, can be integrated to existing or under development collision avoidance system to improve the performance of its interventions in all driving situations. Consequently, we are convinced that the technological solutions are available for approaching the most challenging safety issue of collision avoidance. However we are aware that the related objectives are quite ambitious and that innovative solutions will diffuse only when the conditions � market, social, legislative - are ripe for such diffusion. We will therefore appreciate if you will help us in depicting a scenario to analyse the pros and cons for a more rapid diffusion of active safety features in road transport.
To this end we are listing below a few questions for your considerations that will help to build the scenario. The questions are grouped in two part: Part A questions are intended to help building a general scenario on the prospective of a more incisive application of new technologies to improve the road transport safety; Part B poses more specific questions to compare the ambitious objectives of ERSEC technologies and the status and trends of technology dealing with active safety and automatic vehicle driving.