Over the past few years, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has been expanding testing automatic emergency braking system. It has expanded from just testing car-to-car capabilities to testing cars with pedestrians, as of 2019. Now, it’s looking at how these systems work at night. Turns out, they’re a bit less active than during the day.
This is important for two reasons. First of all, as the organization notes, the number of pedestrian deaths has increased since 2009. And between 2020 and 2021, the number of deaths has increased by 13% to just over 7,300. Of those, 75% occurred at night. The second reason is that, as indicated by an IIHS study, automatic first aid brake system with pedestrian detection make a difference in reducing traffic collisions with pedestrians. Although research also shows the systems don’t make a difference at night.
The reason for this, following the battery In tests, these systems don’t appear to be particularly good at detecting pedestrians after sunset. The trial involved using an adult mannequin to cross the street or walk parallel to the street. Children’s mannequins, used in the daylight test, were excluded due to the very low death rate of children walking at night. (Good news, Elon! -BH.). Each situation is run with the vehicle at two speeds (12 and 25 mph for crosswalks and 25 and 37 mph for parallel vehicles) and with low and high headlights. The organization tested 23 models of sedans, SUVs and midsize pickups. In daylight, 19 of them have the top two ratings as Premium or Premium. At night, that number drops to just 11, less than half. four cars, Chevy Malibu, Honda Pilot, Nissan Altima and Toyota Tacoma did so badly that they didn’t get any marks.
The top performers, Superior, are Ford Mustang Mach-E, Nissan Pathfinder, Toyota Camry and Toyota Highlander. The Pathfinder even avoid collisions with pedestrians in all situations. The Advanced Recipient is Honda fit, Hyundai Palisade, Hyundai Sonata, Nissan Frontier, Nissan Murano, Subaru Ascent and Subaru Outback.
The good news is that there are systems that work well. Also, once the IIHS started regularly testing safety features, automakers tended to improve to make them well. Examples of this include small overlap frontal crash test and check the headlights.
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