The idea of using radar systems for crash prevention on automobiles has been around for some considerable time.It has only been in the last 10 years or so that these systems have been small enough and cost effective enough to put on vehicles,and only until recently as standard equipment on lower end cars.Many factors affect the development of such systems besides the basic operation of the radar system.Functional Safety,regulatory compliance,harsh operating environment and a complex set of features that need to be supported are some of these.This lecture will focus on the applications that new radar systems are addressing and will be required to address in the future,as well as discussing the state of the art of radar systems available today.Regulatory as well as technological factors that affect the development path for such systems will also be addressed.Alternative technologies (such as vision/night vision systems) will be discussed in a competitive/complementary way.Measured data for real world crash scenarios for various sensor types will be shown.As the industry moves forward from Driver Assistance features towards more advanced Driver Safety features,the demands on radar systems increase,which in turn puts pressure on the radar engineer to get more and better quality information from the vehicles surroundings.The ultimate goal of this is reducing the fatalities on the road,or said another way,using radar systems to save people’s lives in the real world.