Two new US studies show that automatic emergency braking can cut the number of rear-end automobile crashes in half and reduce pickup truck crashes by more than 40 percent.
The studies released by a government-auto industry partnership and the other by the insurance industry, each used crash data to make the calculations.
Automatic emergency braking can stop vehicles if systems indicate that a crash is imminent, or slow them to reduce the severity.
Some automakers are moving toward a voluntary commitment by 20 companies to make the braking technology standard equipment on 95 percent of their light-duty models during the current model year, which ends in August next year.
A study by the Partnership for Analytics Research in Traffic Safety compared data on auto equipment with 12 million police-reported crashes from 13 US states that was collected by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the partnership said in a statement.
The group studied forward collision warnings as well as emergency braking.
The group found that front-to-rear crashes were cut by 49 percent when the striking vehicle had forward collision alert plus automatic braking compared with vehicles that did not have either system.
Rear crashes with injuries were cut by 53 percent, the study found.
Vehicles with forward collision warning systems only reduced rear-end crashes by 16 percent and cut rear crashes with injuries by 19 percent, it said.
Automatic emergency braking works well in all conditions, even when roadway, weather or lighting conditions were not ideal, the study showed.
The group also looked at lane departure warning systems and lane-keeping systems.
They reduced crashes from vehicles leaving the roadway by 8 percent and road-departure crashes that cause injuries by 7 percent, the study said.
“These emerging technologies can substantially reduce the number of crashes and improve safety outcomes,” said Tim Czapp, senior manager for safety at European automaker Stellantis, the industry co-chair of the partnership’s board.
In the other study, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that automatic emergency braking reduces rear crash rates for pickups by 43 percent and rear-end injury crashes by 42 percent.
Yet pickups are less likely to have automatic braking than cars or SUVs, despite posing more danger to other road users, the institute found.
“Pickups account for one out of five passenger vehicles on US roads and their large size can make them dangerous to people in smaller vehicles or on foot,” institute vice president of research Jessica Cicchino said in a statement.
Mitsubishi, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, Volkswagen and Honda have filed documents with the US government this year saying that they have made emergency braking standard on at least 90 percent of their models.
General Motors it expected to hit the 90 percent target by the end of the current model year, while BMW, Hyundai, Mazda, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo passed 90 percent last year.
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