The study was conducted by the Insurance Institute for the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) focusing on Mazda’s advanced driver assistance technologies systems.

ADAS is a collection of electronic technologies in vehicles that enhance safety and driving comfort. Using sensors, cameras, and radar, they monitor the environment to provide alerts, automate tasks, or intervene to prevent accidents. Common features include automatic braking, lane-keeping assist, and adaptive cruise control.

HLDI’s analysis of 2015–2023 Mazda vehicles showed that Mazda’s investments in advanced safety engineering, including automatic emergency braking, lane departure prevention, high beam assist, and available driver monitoring technologies are helping to reduce insurance claim rates across multiple crash types.

The most basic technology included front automatic emergency braking with forward collision warning. The most comprehensive bundle added pedestrian detection, adaptive cruise control, high beam assist, lane departure warning and prevention, rear automatic emergency braking, and Mazda’s Driver Attention Alert system.Across the board, HLDI found that larger bundles of features, which also tend to include the latest generation of Mazda’s technologies, produced greater reductions in crash-related insurance claims.

Source: Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI)

• Basic features:
  13 per cent reduction in property damage liability (PDL) claims
  9 per cent reduction in bodily injury liability claims
• Comprehensive features:
  39 per cent reduction in property damage liability claims
  21 per cent reduction in bodily injury liability claims.

Two technologies, front automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection and rear automatic emergency braking, were associated with the most notable additional reductions. 

Mazda’s advanced driver assist system test vehicle

Updated automatic emergency braking systems showed improved ability to prevent vehicle-to-vehicle crashes, while rear automatic emergency braking proved especially effective in eliminating low speed parking lot collisions, which represents a large share of insurance claims.

Effective Stand-Alone Systems

Mazda’s blind spot monitoring with rear cross traffic alert delivered meaningful crash reduction benefits, including:

• Nearly 10 per cent lower property damage liability claim frequency
• 13 per cent lower bodily injury liability claim frequency

Other features such as curve adaptive headlights and head up display were also associated with modest reductions in crash claim frequency. Traffic Sign Recognition did not show clear benefits in this data set, which HLDI noted may be due to system limitations or the smaller number of vehicles equipped with the feature.

A Holistic Look at Losses

As with most advanced safety systems across the industry, some features were linked to increases in claim severity; often due to the cost of replacing modern sensors.

However, when evaluating overall losses, which combine frequency and severity and most directly affect insurance costs, nearly all Mazda ADAS features were associated with lower total losses under property damage liability coverage. 

Matt Moore, chief insurance operations officer at HLDI and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said in a statement: “Another important factor is that crash avoidance systems primarily eliminate crashes that occur at slower speeds. 

“That takes low-dollar claims out of the equation and skews the average cost upward.”

Another analyst, CCC Intelligent Solutions, is reporting that in the US last year repairable claims dropped by more than 10 per cent over the previous year.

Matt Moore, chief insurance operations officer at HLDI

CCC Intelligent Solutions also reported that the proportion of damage estimates that included at least one ADAS calibration reached 35 per cent in the third quarter; up nearly nine percentage points in 12 months.

Total losses during 2025 reached 23 per cent of claims which was a record high.

The HLDI data also revealed that fewer vehicles are being presented for repairs but the vehicles that are subject to insurance claims need more diagnostic work, more calibrations, and more labour hours per job.

According to the US-based Autobody News about 61 per cent of vehicles arriving for collision repair require some form of ADAS calibration, suggesting the gap between what vehicles need and what estimates capture remains significant.

And JD Power reports in its 2025 auto claims study that vehicles from model year 2019 and newer with three or more ADAS features averaged 21.5 days in the repair process, compared with 17.9 days for pre-2015 vehicles with no ADAS features.

HLDI noted that ADAS systems working at lower speeds eliminate many low-dollar claims from the data set. This leaves higher-dollar claims as a larger share of total volume, pushing average severity upward even when total losses are declining.

Meanwhile Jennifer Morrison, director of vehicle safety strategy, Mazda North American Operations said in a statement: “This independent research underscores the value of our holistic, human centric approach to crash avoidance and the importance of making these technologies broadly accessible.”

Jennifer Morrison, director of vehicle safety strategy, Mazda North American Operations

In a special briefing for GoAutoNews Premium 12 months ago, MotorOne-owned Autogroup Solutions said that unexplained erratic behavior by motor vehicles; cars stopping or turning for unexplained reasons, or failing to detect other dangers on the road, can mostly be traced back to incorrect or missing ADAS calibrations.

The company said that many in the motor retail industry are not aware of the importance of ADAS recalibration with very few technicians coming into service departments and panel businesses with even a rudimentary knowledge of the implications of poorly calibrated ADAS or the knowledge of how to perform the work.

MotorOne CEO Greg Lewis described how service technicians were frequently perplexed at these unexplained issues which are costly in terms of wasted time chasing down diagnosis of the issues in dealerships and repair shops. Nor can these issues be fixed without special equipment costing around $100,000 each.

MotorOne CEO Greg Lewis

“The car stops by itself in the middle of the freeway, or it wants to change lanes or warning lights appear on the dashboard and no-one knows what’s wrong with it,” Mr Lewis said.

Footnote: Recalibration of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems is proving to be critical to the correct operation of many electronic driver aids after changes as simple as the replacement of a windscreen.

Read more:

ADAS safety standard launched 

By Neil Dowling