Overview

This chapter addresses broader societal aspects of IV systems as well as some of the many challenges in product introduction that go beyond technical issues. Ways of addressing these challenges are reviewed as well.

Government policy plays a role in terms of regulations (or lack thereof) and can also play a role in accelerating market uptake via purchase incentives for IV systems. Governments also define policy, which may or may not be supportive, based on macrolevel cost/benefit analyses of such systems.

There is a wealth of market issues affecting the sale of ADAS, dominated by public awareness and public perception of the systems. Fundamentally, car companies exist to sell cars, not safety systems explicitly. For any individual company, ADAS must support their sales strategy.

Courts play a major role in stimulating discipline for manufacturers in product design and testing (in the ideal case) and in potentially slowing market introduction when business risks are perceived as too high. In the United States, liability concerns typically delay market introductions by two to three years. How many lives could have been saved in the United States if systems already on the market in other countries had been introduced by now?

However, the territory is a bit treacherous. If ADAS were to malfunction or be misunderstood by users so that frightening things, or even crashes, happen, public confidence in the systems can drop like a stone. Further, this can reverberate to affect introduction of similar systems. The public image of car companies can...