Abstract This paper presents a robust approach for the lateral controller design and analysis. This controller is an important part of the Advanced Evasive Steering system for improving driving safety in emergency situations. First, the path-following problem is formulated in a generic LPV framework taking into account the actuator’s rate constraint and the avoidance trajectory disturbance. Then, a simple static state-feedback is optimized using LMI technique. It is shown that a good compromise between performance and robustness of the controller can be achieved with this method. Moreover, the simplicity and the low tuning effort is beneficial for implementation of the proposed controller on conventional automotive ECUs. Experimental results obtained with different driving scenarios confirm the effectiveness of this method.