Auxiliary safety features such as forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking are being adopted by more and more models. Moreover, most of these configurations in newer versions also incorporate pedestrian identification. That is, when the vehicle detects a pedestrian crossing the road and there is a danger of collision with it, the system will issue a warning and automatically take emergency braking measures if necessary to avoid collisions or minimize the damage of collisions.
Even so, what about the practical effect? IIHS (National Highway Safety Insurance Association) recently tested some vehicles with automatic emergency braking (AEB) with pedestrian recognition function, and found that although the system can reduce the severity of accidents in good lighting, in some specific cases, such as the absence of street lights at night, the pedestrian identification AEB system of most vehicles cannot play its due role, and some results are not even different from vehicles without corresponding systems.
IIHS conducted day/night comparison tests on 8 small SUVs of pedestrian "ghost probes", namely the 2019 Subaru Forester, the 2019 Volvo XC40, the 2020 Honda CR-V, the 2020 Hyundai View, the 2021 Chevrolet Genesis, the 2021 Ford Bronco Sport, the 2021 Toyota C-HR, and the 2022 Volkswagen Taos (the above models are all North American market versions, The configuration is not equivalent to the Chinese market version).
Why choose these cars? Because the AEB systems of these models cover different categories of hardware detection equipment, there are types based on single camera, dual camera, camera + radar, radar.
Among them, the AEB of the Volkswagen Taos test car relies only on radar and is not equipped with a camera. As a result, Taos' test results were largely unaffected by lighting conditions. But Taos' test results during the day were the worst of all models.
The best performance of AEB at night is the Toyota C-HR, in the case of turning on the high beam, the braking effect played by AEB when it encounters a pedestrian "ghost probe" at night is less than 10% different from that of the day, and the difference is relatively small when only the low beam is turned on (including low and high headlights). The Ford Bronco Sport is second only to C-HR at night. The AEB of both cars is based on the hardware configuration scheme of camera + radar.
Subaru Foresters, whose AEB systems rely solely on cameras, behave similarly to Chevrolet Genesis, reacting significantly slower during the day or at night when the high beams are turned on only. This is not difficult to understand, without the blessing of strong infrared capabilities of the camera is like the human eye, in the case of weak light recognition is limited.
Surprisingly, the Volvo XC40 of AEB equipped with camera + radar, although it performed well during the day, the AEB almost failed at night when only the low beam was turned on. The Honda CR-V with similar hardware configurations also performed unsatisfactorily at night.
The IIHS report also notes that the test did not reveal any clear correlation between the vehicle's headlight configuration and AEB's nighttime performance, as the Toyota C-HR, equipped with low headlights, performed at night outperforming the BETTER HEADLIGHTS CR-V and XC40.
So, how important is it to test the effectiveness of AEB at night? Jessica Cicchino, vice president of research at IIHS, said three-quarters of pedestrian fatalities occur in poor light at night. Moreover, in their previous analysis of real pedestrian accidents, they found that although the AEB system with pedestrian detection can reduce the probability of pedestrian impact accidents by 32% and 33% during the day and at dusk and at night with good artificial light, respectively, there is no difference in the accident rate of whether AEB is equipped or not. Therefore, IIHS included the work of nighttime AEB in the scope of testing.
It is believed that these tests can urge manufacturers to better improve the AEB system and its pedestrian identification function. Of course, as a driver, you can't expect the assist system to avoid accidents, and driving carefully is always the core safety element.