More and more cars now have AEB – automatic emergency braking (it is now an essential requirement to get a five-star crash rating in Australia). Some say they can detect pedestrians. David Brown says it’s not that simple.
New research from the American Automobile Association reveals that the pedestrian detection aspects of automatic emergency braking systems perform inconsistently, and proved to be completely ineffective at night.
Testing also found that when a vehicle was turning and came across a pedestrian, the systems did not react at all, colliding with the adult pedestrian target every time.
Clearly further development is necessary and this raises issues of informing the public about variations and limitations in these systems.
On average, nearly 6,000 pedestrians die, on American roads each year, accounting for 16% of all traffic deaths, a percentage that has steadily grown since 2010 and 75% of pedestrian fatalities occur after dark.
