The United States IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) Highway Safety Insurance Association recently proposed the world's first real-world simulation of pedestrian collision avoidance system report. The report points out that the pedestrian collision avoidance system can reduce the accident rate by 27% in the all-light environment, and the accident injury rate can be reduced by 30%; on the other hand, the report also points out that the pedestrian collision avoidance system cannot function normally at night or in a low-light environment, which means that whether it is equipped with this equipment has no significant impact on the accident rate.
The pedestrian collision avoidance system referred to in this report refers specifically to the active safety system that detects pedestrians through a lens or radar and automatically brakes. IIHS said that in the past, the pedestrian collision avoidance systems tested by IIHS were mainly based on the daytime driving environment. In fact, when IIHS added pedestrian collision avoidance to Top Safty Pick and Top Safty Pick+ in 2019, only 60% of the cars with pedestrian collision avoidance systems were equipped, and only 20% of the cars that could win the highest rating at that time. With advances in technology and regulations, 90% of the models equipped with pedestrian AEB are now available, and nearly half of them receive the highest ratings.
The first night test of the pedestrian collision avoidance system, including 8 models
With this in mind, IIHS decided to study the possibility of night-time road testing and set a new standard for pedestrian protection in the future. The model adopted in this night test includes a single lens, a dual lens, a lens with radar, and a single radar in terms of early warning system. The test models and their annual models include: 2019 Subaru Forester, 2019 Volvo XC40, 2020 Honda CR-V, 2020 Hyundai Venue, 2021 Chevrolet Trailblazer, 2021 Ford Bronco Sport, 2021 Toyota C-HR and 2022 Volkswagen Taos.
Pedestrian collision avoidance systems vary greatly between day and night, with the worst remaining 10%.
In the chart of the test results, the horizontal axis is the deceleration ratio (100% indicates complete braking), the vertical axis is the car model, where the yellow line indicates the daytime environment, the light gray line indicates the high beam situation, and the dark gray line indicates that only the near light is turned on. It is not difficult to find that most cars can have a good deceleration performance during the day, but when the ring view is converted to night, its performance drops significantly, not to mention that in the case of only turning on the near lights, the deceleration ratio may be as low as 10%, that is, there is almost no brake.
Lens and radar characteristics are different, and the test results are also different
In addition, as far as the difference in the equipment of the early warning system is concerned, Taos, which is only equipped with a single radar system, cannot be called ideal in terms of deceleration performance in any environment, but due to the characteristics of the radar not being affected by the light source, the performance of the three environments is not too different. The best performing C-HR and Bronco Sport in this test were both lens-plus-radar configurations; among the rest of the models, the Forester and Trailblazer, which had a pure lens system, were no different from the lens-plus-radar CR-V, XC40, and Venue.
Of course, some readers may want to ask, will the quality of the headlights affect their performance at night? As far as the results of this IIHS test are concerned, there is no correlation. In fact, the CR-V and XC40, which have the worst low-beam deceleration ratio, have a "Good" headlamp performance, while the low-gauge version, the C-HR with the "Poor" rating first-class group, has a fairly bright performance in the deceleration performance of low beams.
Finally, IIHS also noted in the report that some automakers have made improvements to the nighttime performance of AEB automatic brakes, but have not been included due to the progress limitations of the report.