Weather Safe: An Innovative Project to Enhance Automotive Safety in Adverse Weather Conditions

Led by UTAC, the Weather Safe project addresses a major challenge: analyzing and mitigating the effects of adverse weather conditions on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Rain, fog, slippery roads—how do these factors disrupt onboard sensors such as cameras and radars? This three-year collaborative project brings together several private partners around a common goal: strengthening vehicle safety in challenging environments.

Intensive Testing and Collective Effort

The project is structured around several key stages, combining practical trials and technical workshops.

• The first workshop took place in March 2025.
• The second was held in early July 2025 at the Cerema center.

During this latest session, more than 150 tests were conducted in just two and a half days, involving around thirty experts from various partner companies. The teams also had access to a privatized highway section, enabling realistic driving simulations.

Promising Results for Tomorrow’s Standards

Weather Safe aims to contribute to European discussions, particularly Euro NCAP, so that extreme weather conditions are better accounted for in safety system assessments.
The research focuses on two major phenomena:

• Loss of visibility, which reduces sensor efficiency.
• Loss of grip, which increases braking distances and affects vehicle stability.

Early tests revealed that a camera exposed to heavy rain experiences a significant drop in detection performance. Automakers such as Nissan, along with Tier-1 suppliers like Aptiv, have already shared initial results, helping shape future regulatory recommendations.

UTAC: Technical Lead of the Project

UTAC ensures overall coordination: planning, test execution, facilitation of technical workshops, and monitoring of deliverables. The company leads the project, sets milestones, and ensures smooth progress.

What’s Next?

There are still six months of experiments and analyses left to refine the final recommendations. The next meeting is scheduled for March 2026 at the Linas-Montlhéry site.
The goal is clear: to propose new evaluation protocols that take extreme weather conditions into account, ensuring safer vehicles in all circumstances.