SUBARU’s Safety Technologies
SUBARU’s Safety Technologies
Plan to Achieve Zero-Fatality Road Safety
As part of our commitment to the priority theme of “pursuing activities that stay close to customers and always provide peace of mind,” part of Peace of Mind, one of our Six Priority Areas for Sustainability, we have set a goal of zero fatal traffic accidents by 20301 and are engaged in development toward achieving this goal.
We conduct accident fact-finding investigations primarily in the U.S. and Japanese markets. For the U.S. market, the number of fatal accidents per million vehicles sold is three to four times higher than in the Japanese market, showing a more severe traffic environment. Therefore, we are analyzing the causes of all fatal accidents involving SUBARU vehicles between 2017 and 2022 in the FARS system2 based on police reports and other data, and are also analyzing injuries that resulted in fatalities in collaboration with the University of Michigan and Gunma University School of Medicine. In the analysis, the causes are analyzed at each stage of the accident in accordance with SUBARU’s concept of all-around safety. We then establish priorities by identifying issues requiring action and the functions that can effectively eliminate the causes of these issues, and proceed with technological development via specific methods for creating these functions. The resulting functionality is then sequentially deployed in each model.
As an example, seat belt use is mandatory for all seats in Japan. There, the seat belt use rate for both drivers and front seat passengers exceeds 96%. However, the use rate for rear seat passengers is 45.5% on local roads and 79.7% on highways, which is lower than the rate for drivers and front seat passengers. On the other hand, studies have shown that the fatality rate (the ratio of fatalities to casualties) when rear seat belts are not worn is approximately 16.6 times higher than when they are worn on highways and 2.7 times higher than when they are worn on local roads3. In order to encourage more people to fasten their seat belts and minimize harm in the event of an accident, we have installed the world’s first rear seat belt reminder with an audible alarm in the Levorg, launched in 2020, and have been sequentially deploying this system to other models. In a web survey of users conducted one year after the introduction of the Levorg, approximately 70% of respondents indicated that they were newly using their seat belts thanks to this function. This incorporation of effective functions based on the actual accident conditions will help us reduce accidents toward achieving the goal of zero fatal traffic accidents.
Based on the analysis of 668 fatal traffic accidents involving SUBARU vehicles that occurred in the U.S. between 2017 and 2022,4 we are developing technologies to prevent all fatal traffic accidents except those involving violation of traffic rules or accidents involving significant dangerous behavior by the other party,5 as well as to respond to traffic accidents of various causes that may occur in the future. Along with the areas of Primary Safety, which is basic design features for avoiding accidents, and Active Safety, the idea of greater safety through driving performance, we aim for a high level of redundant safety by increasing the overlap between the areas of Preventive Safety, Passive Safety, and Connected Safety. We will also promote efforts to educate users about accidents involving violations of traffic rules or those involving significant dangerous behavior by the other party, as well as to propose rules and encourage the improvement of the road environment.
*1：Zero fatal road accidents among occupants of Subaru vehicles and people involved in collisions with Subaru vehicles, including pedestrians and cyclists
*2：Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which provides data on all fatal traffic accidents that occurred in the U.S.
*3：Source： Faster Your Seat Belt Wherever You are Seated (National Police Agency)
https://www.npa.go.jp/bureau/traffic/anzen/seatbelt.html (in Japanese only)
*4：All 668 fatal accidents occurring while a driver or passenger is in a SUBARU vehicle and fatal accidents of pedestrians, cyclists, and the like arising from collisions with a SUBARU vehicle. Data source: FARS
*5：Includes cases where the vehicle was caught between a large vehicle such as a semi trailer in the front and rear, head-on highway collisions where a vehicle was driving the wrong way, and collisions with a pedestrian who entered the highway at night.
Car Assessments
SUBARU undergoes safety performance testing and assessment of public organizations in and out of Japan including JNCAP6 in Japan, IIHS7 and U.S. NCAP8 in the U.S., Euro NCAP9 in Europe, and ANCAP10 in Australia, and has gained the highest rank of assessment in most of them.
For FYE March 2025, as of May 2025, one of SUBARU’s 2025MY (model year) vehicles had won the IIHS’s 2025 TOP SAFETY PICK+ (TSP+) Award, and two vehicles had won its 2025 TOP SAFETY PICK (TSP) Award. In the U.S. New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), eight 2025MY models received 5-Star Safety Ratings in the overall vehicle score. Euro NCAP gave three SUBARU models a five-star rating in its 2024 assessment. As of July 2025, ANCAP gave three SUBARU models a five-star rating in its 2024 assessment.
*6：Japan New Car Assessment Program (JNCAP): An assessment operated by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the National Agency for Automotive Safety and Victims’ Aid (NASVA) to evaluate automobile safety performance.
*7：IIHS: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
*8：U.S. NCAP: U.S. New Car Assessment Program for assessing safety performance operated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
*9：Euro NCAP: European New Car Assessment Programme, a safety information disclosure program for automobiles in Europe.
*10：ANCAP: The Australasian New Car Assessment Program, a safety performance assessment program conducted by an independent organization created by Australian and New Zealand transit authorities.
Car Assessments
Continuous Enhancement of Passive Safety Technology
SUBARU focuses on developing cars with the utmost priority of safeguarding everyone in the event of a collision, not just the vehicle occupants but also pedestrians and cyclists.
Strengthening the vehicle body and enhancing restraint systems are two critical elements to occupant protection. In strengthening the vehicle body, we combined a cabin structure that can withstand severe collisions by using high-strength materials with the Subaru Global Platform, which helped realize a body structure that efficiently absorbs collision energy. This design ensures protection in collisions from any direction. In addition, pedestrians and cyclists sustain injuries at a rate 2.5 times higher than that of vehicle occupants. To reduce the damage to pedestrians and cyclists in the event of an accident, SUBARU not only uses soft structures for bumpers, bonnets, and other areas that can absorb impacts but has also expanded the models equipped with pedestrian airbags.
More than 60% of fatal traffic accidents in Japan result in death from head and chest injuries. In enhancing restraint systems, we reduce the load on the upper body in the event of a collision by firmly restraining the lower body with knee airbags and seat cushion airbags. We also adjust the seat belt tension based on the occupant’s physique to prevent excessive pressure. This ensures the protection of all occupants, regardless of physique. Nevertheless, even with the evolution of restraint systems, they will not be fully effective unless seat belts are properly fastened. Given the low rear seat belt installation rate on local roads in Japan, SUBARU has taken steps to address this situation by introducing seat belt reminders to all seats and expanding the number of models equipped with these reminders.
In addition to protecting occupants, we are also working on mutual safety to protect other parties involved in a collision with a SUBARU vehicle. By adopting a structure that is able to securely control physical contact with the other vehicle by enlarging the bumper beam and adding a sub-frame, we mitigate damage to not only the SUBARU but also the other vehicle.
In the pursuit of even less accidents going forward, it is necessary to anticipate more diverse and severe accidents than ever before, however. For example, in collisions involving bicycles, it has been recognized that under certain limited conditions, the current pedestrian airbags may not cover all cases, given the various factors such as the cyclist’s physique and the angle and speed of both the bicycle and the vehicle at the time of impact. As a result, we are utilizing computer simulations to identify worst-case scenarios from the countless collision patterns that can be imagined and to develop specific countermeasures.
Car Assessments
Further Advances in Preventive Safety Technology
Seventeen years since the birth of EyeSight
The EyeSight system was launched in 2008, achieving a world first in using solely stereo camera technology to enable pre-crash braking and adaptive cruise control. EyeSight version 2 was announced in 2010 with an enhanced pre-crash braking system that provides support until the vehicle comes to a full stop. Since then, we have expanded the number of models equipped with EyeSight in Japan and set affordable prices, which greatly increased its name recognition and adoption among customers, followed by its sequential deployment to other countries. In 2014, with the release of version 3, advancements in color recognition and an expanded field of view using stereo cameras significantly enhanced the advanced safety features. In the 2020 release of the Levorg, SUBARU introduced the EyeSight X advanced driver assistance system, combining a new stereo camera with four radars in the front and rear, and a highprecision map locator. Driving a car can be more strenuous on the body than expected; EyeSight X functionality reduces this burden so that drivers can enjoy their travels safely without getting tired and distracted, even over long distances. In 2022, we newly adopted a wide-angle single lens camera for enhancing EyeSight’s recognition capability in the mainstay Outback for the North American market.
The evolution of this “three-eyed” system of an ultra-wide-angle single lens camera along with two stereo cameras provides even greater visibility than ever before. This helps to avoid collisions and mitigate damage in the event of a collision by quickly detecting pedestrians and cyclists that may come out of blind spots at intersections, a sudden situation that many customers have experienced.
The stereo cameras equipped in EyeSight are unique in that they enable the system to recognize objects with two cameras, similar to human eyes, so it can recognize more information than radar-based systems and detect objects on the road, vehicles ahead, pedestrians, road geometry, etc., more accurately. About 30 years ago, when the development of EyeSight began, there was still no technology to replace the image captured by a camera with a depth map and to detect three-dimensional objects from it. We also struggled to fully grasp the unique qualities of stereo cameras, and faced numerous challenges such as failure to detect properly due to rain or fogged glass. However, we have continued to evolve by analyzing various accidents and repeatedly making improvements by thoroughly testing each scenario, resolving issues one by one, and making sincere efforts to reduce vehicle accidents, a social issue we are addressing. As a result, the cumulative global sales volume has reached approximately 7.6 million units as of June 2025 since launching in Japan in 2008.
New-generation EyeSight stereo camera
+ wideangle
single lens camera
What we have built up through EyeSight development
In order to reduce accidents, we believe it is necessary not only to equip vehicles with technology, but also to spread the popularity of vehicles with safe technology by offering exceptional performance at a price that is affordable for a wide range of customers. Raising performance while keeping prices low is quite a challenge. Because it is important to be able to pack these optimized systems with highly precise functions while thoroughly reducing costs, we produce the software for sensors and control in-house. Our engineers go to various sites around the world to collect in-depth data, modify sensor and control software, and advance development with a thorough focus on feeling so that the customer does not feel uneasy about the car’s behavior and is able to control the vehicle comfortably. In-house development is by far the quickest way to deal with issues related to sensors and control, and quality can be improved by repeating the PDCA cycle many times before commercialization. In addition, the accumulated expertise we have gained over more than a decade through this approach has become one of our strengths.
Integrating EyeSight and AI to enhance recognition technology
SUBARU is committed to enhancing its preventive safety technologies and is actively exploring new technologies as it strives to achieve zero fatal traffic accidents. Our current focus is on integrating AI technology with EyeSight.
The fundamental principle of spatial recognition using stereo cameras is to precisely calculate the distance to objects from each pixel by triangulating the displacement of images captured by the two cameras, one on the right and one on the left. The strength of EyeSight lies in its ability to accurately convert everything captured by the cameras into a three-dimensional representation, allowing it to perceive the shape and distance of various objects. However, when capturing small objects or subtle irregularities, there are some cases in which it is very challenging with the image recognition of EyeSight alone to determine whether it should be passed over or considered an obstacle. In contrast, AI excels at categorizing objects captured in camera, pixel by pixel, based on extensive previously learned data. Since EyeSight can fuse the distances to recognized objects with the classifications made by AI in the same image, EyeSight and AI are considered an excellent match. If this can be put into practical use, it is expected to lead to an enhanced level of vehicle safety in various situations by allowing for more detailed and accurate recognition of the driving environment’s information than ever before.
This initiative is being pursued at SUBARU Lab, a newly established independent office, designed to create an environment for generating fresh ideas from a different perspective. This new base in Tokyo’s Shibuya, an area evolving into an IT hub following recent redevelopment efforts, has enabled us to streamline and effectively recruit the talent essential for AI development and collaborate with IT-related companies, leading to faster development than ever before.
In April 2024, SUBARU announced the adoption of Versal™ AI Edge Series Gen 2 from AMD as the SoC to be used in the Next-Generation AI-powered EyeSight under development at SUBARU Lab, and that SUBARU would begin collaborating with AMD on circuit design to optimize the SoC11 in order to achieve cutting-edge AI inference performance and ultra-low latency computing at a low cost. In this collaboration, we are developing a custom SoC with additional electronic circuits covering the needed high-speed calculations while removing circuits from the general-purpose version of the SoC that are unnecessary for our use case, with a focus on semiconductor circuit design to optimize performance, power consumption, and cost.
In November 2024, we announced the start of collaboration with onsemi12 on the dedicated design of Hyperlux AR0823AT image sensors to improve the performance of recognition processing that combines stereo cameras with AI inference. This collaboration will enable us to create a dedicated design for the AR0823AT to incorporate optimal visual data for AI inference processing, and to further refine the stereo camera recognition technology that we have accumulated over the years through in-house production as we aim to incorporate this into the Next-Generation EyeSight system planned for the latter half of the 2020s.
*11：Subaru and AMD Collaborate on SoC Design to Integrate Stereo Camera and AI Inference for the Next-Generation EyeSight (April 19, 2024)
https://www.subaru.co.jp/news-en/2024_04_19_154452/
*12：Subaru and onsemi Collaborate on Optimized Design of Image Sensors for the Next-Generation EyeSight (November 19, 2024)
https://www.subaru.co.jp/news-en/2024_11_19_113743/