Motor vehicles of categories M and N; Road vehicles in general (ICS 43.020)

Draft Commission Delegated Regulation supplementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2144 of the European Parliament and of the Council by laying down detailed rules concerning the specific test procedures and technical requirements for the type-approval of motor vehicles with regard to the driver drowsiness and attention warning systems and amending Annex II to that Regulation and Annex II to Regulation (EU) 2018/858 of the European Parliament and of the Council (7 page(s), in English; 18 page(s), in English)

Currently, there are no EURO NCAP (The European New Car Assessment Programme) protocols for testing vehicles' driver drowsiness and attention warning (DDAW) systems. The development of such systems is specific to research teams, car manufacturers and suppliers, therefore, the provisions of this Regulation cover the human machine interface aspect and the environment, where the DDAW must warn the driver.

The testing method is based on tests run with human participants, either in a simulated environment or in a test vehicle, and the results are a compilation of successful drowsiness warnings and failure to warn the driver. This Regulation provides a reference scale to be used by manufacturers and technical services to measure driver drowsiness. Manufacturers may choose to use alternative measurement methods, in which case the process must be duly documented and equivalence to the reference scale set out in the Regulation has to be provided.

The technical services will assess the technical documentation and the results from the tests performed by the manufacturers and may re-run tests on predictable aspect of the system. Vehicle manufacturers have to propose at least one test protocol for checking the capability of the DDAW systems to provide a warning to the driver. The technical services will carry out testing in accordance with this test protocol.