Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) refer to the set of smart components such as object detection and tracking systems used to protect drivers and road users. An important task that should be performed by ADAS is the measurement of the distance between a vehicle and a detected object. This helps to anticipate the position of objects in the lane, prevents collisions and improves the safety on the road. For this purpose, Distance Measurement Systems (DMS) including Visionbased techniques, Millimeter wave radars, Infrared ranging, and LIDAR are used in the automotive industry. In this paper, we discuss the design of such systems and their use in smart vehicles. Particular attention is given to vision-based techniques because they are considered among the most accurate systems used to identify targets and to measure the distance from them to a vehicle.