Few vehicles earn high marks in IIHS’s new nighttime pedestrian AEB tests

Only four of 23 vehicles examined aced the first nighttime test of pedestrian automatic emergency braking (PAEB) systems conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) while more than half earned a basic score or no credit.Get more news about best vehicle test lane,you can vist our website!

The findings underscore IIHS’s previous concerns about the performance of PAEB systems in low-light conditions and may lead to consumer and regulatory pressure to improve the systems’ performance.

“As we expected, most of these pedestrian AEB systems don’t work very well in the dark,” IIHS President David Harkey said in a statement. “But it’s clear automakers can rise to this new challenge, as Ford, Nissan and Toyota each earn superior ratings for some models.”
IIHS and the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) in March petitioned federal regulators to require through rulemaking that passenger vehicles be equipped with PAEB systems that work well in the dark.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has already been directed by the Department of Transportation to initiate rulemaking on a requirement that new passenger vehicles be equipped with PAEB by 2024. IIHS and HLDI are going a step beyond, petitioning NHTSA to require PAEB that is effective in all light conditions.

IIHS-HLDA noted that NHTSA has announced its intent to add PAEB to the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) technologies recommended under the agency’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP). “While IIHS and HLDI support adding nighttime testing to NCAP, we believe good performance in the dark should be mandated and not merely recommended through NCAP,” the March letter states.

IIHS developed its nighttime test in response to earlier findings that, while PAEB reduces pedestrian crash risk by an estimated 32-33% in daylight, it does not reduce pedestrian crash risk in the dark. The ratings released Tuesday were the first awarded under that new test.Joe Young, director of media relations for IIHS, previously told Repairer Driven News that while the institute occasionally files petitions for rulemaking, it has found that its consumer ratings programs are more efficient at driving change.

Those programs “have helped drive dramatic improvements in occupant protection in a variety of crash configurations and crash avoidance technologies,” Young said.

IIHS introduced the daytime vehicle-to-pedestrian evaluation in 2019 and made an advanced or superior rating a requirement for a Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick+ award in 2020. Today, the feature is available on nearly nine out of 10 new models that IIHS evaluates, and half of the systems tested earn superior ratings in daylight conditions.