Cars with automatic emergency braking (AEB) aren't as safe as they seem to be.
A recent study from the American Automobile Association (AAA) has found that automobiles with AEB do not safely decelerate when driven at normal driving speeds, per The Verge.
AEB is a safety system that causes cars with it to automatically brake and come to a stop when the car's onboard computer detects that a collision is almost certain to occur, per J.D. Power.
AAA 2022 Automatic Emergency Braking Study Details
The AAA mentioned in its latest study that it wanted to put cars with AEB to the test to see how much the feature was developed since it was first rolled out to automobiles almost 20 years ago.
Although the AAA knows it can prevent and reduce the number of low-speed rear-end crashes, it wants to see how the feature would hold up in situations when cars cause a T-bone collision and when a car is taking a left turn in front of oncoming vehicles.
For those unaware, a T-bone collision is when an oncoming vehicle crashes onto the side of another, forming a "T" shape during impact, per Ben Crump Law.
To do so, it used four cars with AEB, such as the 2022 Chevrolet Equinox LT, 2022 Ford Explorer XLT, 2022 Honda CR-V Touring, and the 2022 Toyota RAV4 LE, and had them crash into dummy cars at normal driving speeds.
The AAA found the results to be vastly disappointing. According to the study, the AEB in all four cars failed to detect and prevent 100% of crashes the AAA staged. This result means that the AEB can't function when the automobile they come with is driving at normal driving speeds.
However, the cars' AEB did better when tested on rear-end collisions, although their speed was kept to as close to 30mph as possible. Doing so had the cars' AEB prevent 17 out of 20 simulated crashes.
Fortunately, the AEB was proven capable to reduce the possible impact dummy cars took by 86% in the three simulated crashes.
However, the cars' AEB fared worse when it was accelerated to 40mph, which resulted in only six prevented collisions out of a possible 20. During the 14 collisions, the AEB reduced the damage the dummy car took by 62%.
Effects Of AAA's Study In The Automobile Industry
The AAA's findings can be considered a blow to road safety as the tests show that cars with AEB couldn't detect, much less prevent, a collision when being driven at normal driving speeds.
You may remember that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety announced in mid-March 2016 that automakers are required to outfit all cars with AEB by September 2022.
With the AAA's findings in its latest study, automakers will need to develop an even better AEB or something better than what they have now to prevent collisions at normal driving speeds.
That is not the only problem the AAA found with cars with AEB. The association found in two separate studies that cars with AEB couldn't prevent collisions with pedestrians at night or with other automobiles during heavy rainstorms.
