Nissan (OTC) announced yesterday that it was developing new driver assistance technology. It expects this will reduce traffic accidents significantly and help shape autonomous driving’s future.

Japanese carmaker, Honda demonstrated its ability to automatically execute collision-avoidance maneuvers within its facilities using its latest technology. The company’s new driver assistance technology utilizes information from state-of-the-art light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology, radar and cameras.

This technology can detect road obstructions and make necessary lane changes.

Nissan has introduced a variety of driver assist technologies to the market for the first time. When we look at the future of autonomous driving, we believe that it is of utmost importance for owners to feel highly confident in the safety of their vehicle,” said Takao Asami, Senior Vice President, Nissan Motor Co.

Asami feels confident that its new driver-assistance technology will drastically boost owners’ confidence, and contribute to lowering the number of traffic accidents. To develop ground truth perception technology using Luminar Technologies (LAZR), the automaker has partnered with several innovative companies, including Asami.

Itay Michaeli, Citi analyst, reflected positively on the partnership.

“Our initial takeaways are: (1) A clear positive for Luminar as the Nissan collaboration marks the first with a major mass-market automaker (~4mln units), providing encouraging validation for both the tech and future BOM outlook. We are now incrementally more confident in our out-year Luminar forecasts. (2) Nissan’s expected wide-adoption of this new ADAS suite appears broadly consistent with how we’ve previously modeled the supplier ADAS/AV content TAM through 2030E,” Michaeli wrote in a note.

By Senad Karaahmetovic