Do Automatic Braking Systems Save Lives?

[Xist]

This couple says their car saved their life.

I drive ten hours each weekend. That gives me a great amount of time to wonder about things like: Do trees fart?

I regularly mention the time I hit an elk. For the foreseeable future, Mom will live in elk country, and I will visit her regularly.

When I was not busy counting semis with Trailer Tails (I saw eleven in three hours!) I wondered if automatic braking would help against an elk. I never saw mine. I definitely did not have time to react, but I braking half a second before I can could give me a fighting chance.

According to this, my Accord can go 60 - 0 in 135 feet. Since an object travels 88 feet in one second at 60 MPH, it can stop in perhaps three seconds, so if it braked for half a second before hitting an elk, I might hit it at 50 MPH, instead of 60.

I did not feel there would be many statistics on times people braked really hard. This is what I was able to pull together:

"Over 1,700 people were killed and 500,000 injured in rear end crashes 2012, according to a federal safety agency." "[C]onsumers want to be in the driver's seat when it comes to deciding on how they spend their safety dollars, and automakers agree." Automatic braking shouldn't just be for the rich - Jun. 9, 2015

"In 2012, one-third of all police-reported crashes involved a rear-end collision with another vehicle as the first harmful event in the crash” https://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle-Sho...nology/AEB/aeb

When compared to SUVs that didn’t have collision avoidance technology, Volvo’s XC60 SUVs (equipped with City Safety) had:

33 percent fewer bodily injury claims
15 percent fewer property damage claims
20 percent fewer collision claims
And for Volvo’s S60 midsize sedans, City Safety resulted in claims reductions of:

18 percent for bodily injury
16 percent for property damage
9 percent for collision

Do Automatic Braking Systems Save Lives?

That only applies to accidents at 30 MPH or lower, though.

The National Safety Council estimated that, in the first 6 months of 2015, there were approximately 18,630 motor-vehicle deaths, and almost 2.2 million injuries, costing approximately $152 billion (a figure that includes direct and indirect costs). To reduce the number of accidents on the road, 20 automakers have come together to make automatic emergency braking a standard feature in all new cars by 2022.

Good news everyone! I should have automatic braking by 2035!

Those automakers are Audi, BMW, FCA US LLC, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Tesla Motors Inc., Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo Car USA.
Automatic braking in cars to be mandatory by 2022 | Public Health

The NHTSA estimates automatic braking will prevent 28,000 crashes and 12,000 injuries.

Strangely, people complain that twenty times as many people die from heat disease each year. What does that have to do with anything? Are engineers necessarily the right people to fight heart disease? What if someone rear-ends a critic, who then has a heart attack?

Why does football supposedly have more injuries than rugby, which does not have the protective equipment? Why are people allegedly more likely to hurt their back while wearing a weight belt? That last article points out that people felt concerned people would rely on seatbelts and airbags to keep them safe.

"The second highest cause of automobile crashes is rear end collisions – 17 percent."

Clay Gabler, professor of biomedical engineering at Virginia Tech, and Kristofer Kusano of Herndon, Va., a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering, have published research in peer-reviewed journals, predicting that the use of three automatic braking systems may reduce serious injuries by 50 percent. https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2012/...avoidance.html

[redpoint5]

I agree that all cars should have automatic braking. It doesn't cost much to add it, and would probably pay for itself in lower insurance premiums.

People injure themselves wearing weight belts because it doesn't do anything. It gives people a false sense of security.

[jamesqf]

I really doubt that automatic braking would do much to prevent hitting deer and other such critters. The problem is that the ones you hit mostly aren't the ones standing out in the road, or even at the side of the road where you (or the automatic braking system) can see them. It's the ones that conceal themselves behind trees & bushes, and dash out in front of you at the last possible second.

Nor do I think automatic braking would do much about rear-end crashes. Say you're following someone in traffic, and they brake. Your car detects this, and forcefully applies the brakes, whereupon the car behind rearends you.

If there's going to be an automatic system for things like this, it ought to be a tailgate preventer, which either slows you down if you get too close, or moves you into the slow lane if you're blocking traffic in the fast lane.

[JockoT]

Automatic braking significantly reduces the reaction time, and regarding rear end collisions, I'd prefer the guy who runs into me had to pay for the damage to both vehicles rather than me having to pay for mine and the one in front!
Automatic braking also brakes a lot harder than most drivers do, even when they can see a crash is imminent.

[Fat Charlie]

Anything that can be classified as a truck... all the Humscalades and Canyoneros out there, should be required to have automatic brakes.

[MetroMPG]

Good post, Xist!

Originally Posted by jamesqf

It's the ones that conceal themselves behind trees & bushes, and dash out in front of you at the last possible second.

Yep, the animals with death wishes are the tricky ones!

In all seriousness, it seems they're still working on getting the cars to respond consistently to stationary targets, small or large:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9O-aejD0vI

But the capabilities of this automatic/predictive safety stuff will only get better and better.

I drove a neighbour's car with "cross traffic alert" and was pleasantly surprised. It would vibrate part of the seat so the appropriate butt cheek would tingle if there was danger lurking in the blind spot when reversing or when activating the turn signal.

(So I drove around with my turn signals on constantly! Thank you. I'm here all week.)

Since we're all above average drivers, I'm sure none of us needs this stuff. But everyone else should have it.

[JockoT]

So Automatic Brake systems can fail! Are they not supposed to be a back up to an alert driver?

[wdb]

Originally Posted by JockoT

So Automatic Brake systems can fail! Are they not supposed to be a back up to an alert driver?

What is this "alert driver" you speak of?

Here's what will happen (in the US at any rate):
- auto braking goes into car
- drivers say "yay one less thing to pay attention to"
- bad things happen
- drivers say "waah auto brakes failed"
- lawsuit!

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by JockoT

Automatic braking significantly reduces the reaction time...

It can't reduce the reaction time much, because it isn't that large in the first place. It might or might not reduce decision time: after all, sometimes braking isn't the appropriate response, a quick lane change could well be better. (Or in the case of deer, hitting it instead of swerving, going into the ditch, and rolling.) I'm not sure that automatic systems are capable of making such decisions reliably.

[JockoT]

At 60 mph the car travels 60 feet before the driver actually hits the brakes (UK Highway Code). This is classed as the Thinking Distance before the driver reacts and hits the brakes. So if you can reduce that, and Automatic Braking can, it could mean the difference between living and dying (for either you and/or someone/something else).