The U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is launching a new crash avoidance test that will focus on automatic emergency braking systems that react to pedestrians.
Set to launch in early 2019, the test will at first be conducted on 11 small SUVs (model years 2018-19). It is a new addition to the Institution’s safety evaluations — which include ratings of front crash prevention, rear crash prevention and headlights.
According to the IIHS news release, the brake test will simulate three possible collision scenarios: the first focusing on an adult pedestrian crossing the street; the second focusing on a child running running across the street from behind two parked cars; and the third targets an adult in the lane near the road’s edge.
“The test with the small child dummy is the toughest,” said David Aylor, manager of active safety testing at IIHS. “The dummy is hidden by a car and an SUV parked on the right side of the road as the test vehicle approaches, so there’s no clear sight line for the cameras — or driver — until the dummy emerges in the vehicle’s path.”
Approximately a third of all 2019 models feature a standard auto-brake system with some sort of pedestrian detection. Another third include an optional system that responds to pedestrians.
In 2011, IIHS did an analysis of its 2005-09 crash data and found that pedestrian detection could help reduce or prevent up to 65 per cent of “single-vehicle crashes with pedestrians in the three most common crash configurations.” It is also estimated to mitigate or prevent 58 per cent of pedestrian deaths resulting from these collisions.
