A few years ago, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) discovered that its automatic emergency braking (AEB) test wasn’t really simulating real-world crashes. It had been testing the systems at relatively low speeds, far below the speeds where most rear-end crashes actually occurred. The IIHS decided to raise the speeds, and recent results reveal that these systems are getting better at working in most real-world scenarios.
Of the 29 vehicles tested, 21 earned IIHS’s Good or Acceptable rating. One earned a Marginal grade, while the remaining six received Poor ratings. That’s a big increase from the first batch of cars tested early last year. Only two earned a Good or Acceptable rating out of the 10 test vehicles.
The institute raised the test’s speeds from 12 and 25 miles per hour to 31, 37, and 43 after discovering that about half of nonfatal rear-end crashes occurred on roads with 35 to 45 mph limits. It also added two more crash targets, a motorcycle and a semi-truck, to the existing passenger car test.
Cars that earned IIHS’s Good rating came to a complete stop before impacting the passenger car target. Most also stopped for the motorcycle, but this remains a weak point for AEB systems, with “motorcycle tests the most common stumbling block,” according to the institute. For the semi-truck, the cars only needed to provide a timely warning of an impending collision, which many Good-rated cars also achieved.
Acceptable-rated models struggled with avoiding the motorcycle target at higher speeds. None of the Acceptable models prevented a collision with the motorcycle in the 43-mph test, with some impacting the target at over 25 mph. The Poor-rated vehicles struggled with both the passenger car, with most failing to slow enough in the 37-mph test, and every single one hit the motorcycle in the 31-mph run. However, the vehicles issued a timely forward collision warning in most tests with the car and semi-truck.
Check out IIHS’s full report right here.