Vehicle stability control (VSC) is designed to assist the driver in maintaining control of the vehicle during sudden maneuvers or adverse weather conditions. This study seeks to identify reductions in certain crash types for VSC-equipped vehicles using high-volume crash data. Crash rates for a variety of impact types before and after VSC technology was implemented are compared. Police-reported crashes from six available U.S. state files from 1998-2002 were analyzed including 13,987 crash-involved study vehicles not equipped with the technology and 5,671 crashes of vehicles equipped with VSC as a standard feature. Results show an 11.2% reduction in multi-vehicle frontal crash involvement for VSC-equipped vehicles and a 52.6% reduction in single-vehicle crash rates. These findings suggest that a significant proportion of single-vehicle crashes may be prevented with widespread implementation of stability control technology.

Bahouth, G. Real World Crash Evaluation of Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) Technology. In Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine 49th Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, Des Plaines, IL, 2005, pp. 19-34.