IIHS and AEB: Driving Safer Roads with Technology

IIHS and AEB: Driving Safer Roads with Technology

Automatic Emergency Braking – AEB — works.

The technology, pioneered at the turn of the century by Honda and Mercedes-Benz, reduces crashes — primarily rear-end ones — thus saving lives.

The common-sense approach to crash safety – eliminate or mitigate the impact of a crash before it happens – has led to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) -promoted voluntary application of the system by 2022 to a federally mandated one in 2029. Compliance with the regulation should not be an issue since virtually all passenger vehicles sold since 2022 in the United States have been AEB equipped.

As the auto industry prepares to meet this regulatory milestone, The BRAKE Report Magazine turned to Dr. David Kidd, a senior research scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the father of the most recent AEB rating system, for some insights on this influential organization’s role in the process.

“Ultimately, what we want is to push the [auto] manufacturers to improve vehicle safety in some way and eventually the government [to act, as it did in formulating Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard, 127 covering AEB],” explaining why IIHS conducts and publicizes the type of vehicle testing it performs,” said the research scientist.

Dr. Kidd cited reductions in rear-end crashes by approximately 50 percent overall thanks to the increased adoption of AEB.

“Because ultimately, what we want is to push manufacturers to improve vehicle safety in some way.”

Rear-end collisions are a common type for which insurance claims are filed, according to Dr. Kidd.

“When you go down the road, you see it all the time, especially if you’re in an urban or a heavily built-up area. If you’re talking about not running into a truck where you could die or not hitting a person or a bicyclist who you could kill. I would, I would want that safety assurance AEB can provide.”

Automatic Emergency Braking is a simple idea, a concept understood by all parties, with, according to Dr. Kidd, very similar definitions of it.