Meera Naran renews call for widespread ADAS adoption
Independent road safety campaigner Meera Naran has reiterated her call for the widespread adoption of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), highlighting their potential to prevent fatal crashes and serious injuries.
Naran, a pharmacist and Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University in the UK, began her campaign following the death of her eight-year-old son Dev who was killed in a motorway collision with a lorry in 2018.
In an interview with Zag Daily, she described how the tragedy became the catalyst for her work in road safety, which has since gained global attention.
Her advocacy has focused particularly on Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB), a system that uses sensors such as radar, cameras or LiDAR to detect potential collisions and automatically apply the brakes if the driver does not respond.
“When I began my campaign, my first thought was that if the lorry that had crashed into the car with Dev in it had automatic braking, that crash would have been entirely prevented. The lorry would have automatically stopped with the car in front of it and Dev would have walked away and come home,” Naran told Zag Daily.
Naran has since helped shape the UK’s first Road Safety Strategy in over a decade, which aims to cut road deaths and serious injuries by 65% by 2035.
Central to the Strategy is ‘Dev’s Law’ - named in memory of Naran’s son - which proposes to mandate a suite of 18 vehicle safety technologies aimed at better protecting drivers and vulnerable road users.
Naran was a featured speaker at Global NCAP’s 2024 World Congress where she passionately addressed the need to raise vehicle safety standards to tackle preventable road deaths. Her renewed call underscores the growing recognition of ADAS as a critical tool in reducing road fatalities.
