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Transportation Science Technology

Studies Find Automatic Braking Can Cut Crashes Over 40% (apnews.com) 176

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Two new U.S. studies show that automatic emergency braking can cut the number of rear-end automobile crashes in half, and reduce pickup truck crashes by more than 40%. From a report: The studies released Tuesday, one by a government-auto industry partnership and the other by the insurance industry, each used crash data to make the calculations. Automatic emergency braking can stop vehicles if a crash is imminent, or slow them to reduce the severity. Some automakers are moving toward a voluntary commitment by 20 companies to make the braking technology standard equipment on 95% of their light-duty models during the current model year that ends next August.

A study by The Partnership for Analytics Research in Traffic Safety compared data on auto equipment with 12 million police-reported crashes from 13 states that was collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the partnership said in a statement Tuesday. The group studied forward collision warning as well as emergency braking. The group found front-to-rear crashes were cut 49% when the striking vehicle had forward collision alert plus automatic braking, when compared with vehicles that didn't have either system. Rear crashes with injuries were cut by 53%, the study found. Vehicles with forward collision warning systems only reduced rear-end crashes by 16%, and cut rear crashes with injuries by 19%.
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Studies Find Automatic Braking Can Cut Crashes Over 40% More

Studies Find Automatic Braking Can Cut Crashes Over 40%

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  • Body-shops will go bankrupt by the thousands.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by pete6677 ( 681676 )

      Nah. They're making more money than ever before, as cars become far less economically repairable and even the slightest bit of vehicle damage now costs minimum $2k to repair since entire body panels plus their numerous electronic sensors must be replaced.

      • Nah. They're making more money than ever before, as cars become far less economically repairable and even the slightest bit of vehicle damage now costs minimum $2k to repair since entire body panels plus their numerous electronic sensors must be replaced.

        If the car can't be economically repaired the insurance company will just total it.

        I've found that body shops have two prices, the one they would charge an insurance company. and the one they would charge a consumer directly. For an insurance company quote they will replace everything. For a consumer they will repair what's broken and replace only if necessary.

        • Re:Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @09:32AM (#63052877)

          I've found that body shops have two prices, the one they would charge an insurance company. and the one they would charge a consumer directly. For an insurance company quote they will replace everything. For a consumer they will repair what's broken and replace only if necessary.

          You just described the US healthcare system.

          • I've found that body shops have two prices, the one they would charge an insurance company. and the one they would charge a consumer directly. For an insurance company quote they will replace everything. For a consumer they will repair what's broken and replace only if necessary.

            You just described the US healthcare system.

            That's true too! I just got a bill for an ER visit for my daughter. When she got Covid her extremities swelled up and urgent care directed us to go to the ER. These are the line items for her ER visit:
            Emergency room: $4509
            Emergency room IV: $1120
            Emergency room laboratory/Pathology: $1648
            Emergency room pharmacy: $9
            Total billed: $7286
            Insurance payment -$1306
            Insurance Adjustment: -$5834
            Total payments & adjustments: -$7140
            Net due: $145

            It's a crazy system

            • In business school it's called differential pricing, but you may know it as "trying your luck."
            • I live in Central Europe. My cancer treatment so far cost less than 100 Euros out of pocket. Even for dental care, I paid 15 Euro for a repair to a crown last week, so Im not complaining.
            • The idea here is that most uninsured are very poor and those bills will end up in collection. So they just screw the government (and the poor chumps stuck in collection with incredibly inflated bills) for the maximum tax write-off. The simple solution to this would be to require that the tax write-off be equal to the rates settled with insurance providers, but the gigantic healthcare lobby is never going to allow that to happen.
        • Depends. If your body shop is a "partner" or "preferred provider" to a particular insurance company, then YMMV. In exchange for getting a boatload of referrals from the insurance company, the shop may tone down their "replace everything" attitude, be more agreeable to non-OEM replacement parts for some things, reduce parts mark-up, and give a better hourly rate.
        • Let's say your insurance got a $1000 estimate to repair & paint a body panel or two. You ask the shop how much it would cost to fix an old scratch on the bumper while they're at it, have the paint already mixed up, etc. Another $100 maybe? Oh, that'll be $1,350! Gotta make up for those tight margins on insurance jobs.

      • "Nah. They're making more money than ever before, as cars become far less economically repairable and even the slightest bit of vehicle damage now costs minimum $2k to repair since entire body panels plus their numerous electronic sensors must be replaced."

        And the newfangled cars will just get hit in the back by an old car, when this new car breaks automatically.

        It was the very same thing when ABS was introduced.

    • Youâ(TM)re also talking about a significant reduction in the number one cause of death in some younger cohorts. Think of the funeral homes â¦!
  • And its 100% fool proof. Lets all just do that instead.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Actually it's less than 100% due to the idiots that occasionally crash their cars into homes.

      • idiots that occasionally crash their cars into their own homes.

        FTFY

        To crash your car into someone else's home would require you to at some point leave your own home, which has already been ruled out in the scenario.

        Edge cases : when the structure of the crashed-into home abuts the parking area of the crashing vehicle's "home". Also complicated : situations where the homes in question have no designated parking for vehicles, and the crashed-into home abuts the driving/ parking areas.

        See also : the "insura

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          Car accidents usually (but not necessarily) involve two parties. So it's entirely possible for you to stay home and still be involved in one because someone else crashed into your home.

        • To crash your car into someone else's home would require you to at some point leave your own home, which has already been ruled out in the scenario.

          Edge cases : when the structure of the crashed-into home abuts the parking area of the crashing vehicle's "home".

          Mabey just barely. How would you classify this one I experienced with a neighbor as a kid?

          Dude gets into his Bronco. Thinks it's in reverse but is in drive and plows through the back of his garage (he had front and back garage doors). So he tried to back it out of his backyard and back into his garage. In the process, he goes THROUGH his garage, demolishes the corvette in his driveway, backs up about 150 feet onto the grass "island" in the court (where all the neighborhood kids loved to play on a regular b

  • Elaine Herzberg may still be alive with it!

  • ... think that they have above-average driving skills. Even if they admit that their driving practice isn't always up to their "skills" - which questions their self-proclaimed skill level.

    Shrug - machines can drive better than me, probably. I only get a chance to drive every few months anyway, so I need more practice. And the reason for the ego problem is?

  • I can't help but wonder (Score:3)

    by taustin ( 171655 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @09:57AM (#63052943) Homepage Journal

    If they made any attempt to distinguish between causation and correlation.

    When automatic braking systems are options (that cost extra) or only standard on luxury cars, do crashes go down because of the systems, or because people who pay extra for the additional safety feature are just more cautious drivers?

    • Or are the people who buy fancy expensive cars with these extra options entitled asshats who drive aggressively?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      People who buy expensive cars are generally _not _ interested in going with the flow. Sometimes they have no choice but to conform, but look at the assholes who pass you on the shoulder. It's generally not some delivery driver in a Honda Civic.

  • I had just purchased a new Prius with collision avoidance. Driving home from work, I had a stroke the same day Luke Perry did. Instead of rolling through a chain fence and down a gentle slope, my car decided to beep, brake and wake me up. I survived, but I'm now constantly dizzy and have a severely reduced quality of life. I always wondered what would have happened if I had never woken up.
  • Did anyone run cost benefit analysis on this? What is a typical added costs and extra maintenance when compared to cost of damage in a rear end crash? As fleet managers don't seem to rush to install this on all fleet cars, I suspect it is cheaper to just repair or replace a small number of impacted cars and trucks.

  • Not riding someone's ass (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kelxin ( 3417093 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @10:29AM (#63053017)
    So close you can pull their hair and whisper naughty things in their ear also reduces accidents 40%. Another 40% would to stop being an idiot. That lovely 100 car accident in Denver a couple weeks ago when there WASN'T EVEN ANY SNOW. Sure, it was cold which meant people had to open their eyes and be aware of ice, but 100 fucking cars? Literally, stop driving like an asshole or a moron and you won't get in an accident.

    • It's baffling to me how most people are fully capable of driving on a learned level, but they simultaneously don't seem to intuitively understand what it MEANS that they are driving thousands of lbs of vehicle at high speeds.

      To quote Man of La Mancha, whether the rock hits the pitcher, or the pitcher hits the rock, it's going to be bad for the pitcher.

      You missed your exit? So what, go take the next exit and loop back, you don't REALLY need to go careening at high speeds across multiple lanes of traffic. etc

      • Re:Not riding someone's ass (Score:5, Insightful)

        by apoc.famine ( 621563 ) <apoc.famine@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:04PM (#63053303) Journal

        Yep. My car has adaptive cruise, and I have it set to follow at the proper, safe distance. It's insane how many people decide that they can fit in that space! Regularly 2-3 people will just pull into the space between me and the car ahead of me - it's just mindblowing. They have zero chance of stopping if the first car brakes suddenly. Zero. Even with automated braking.

        Every now and then I consider reducing the following distance, because maybe then less people will try to wedge in there? Am I actually making it more dangerous by being a safe driver?

        I just don't understand why we don't employ the minimum tech needed to enforce safe following distances. Just paint a zone on the road, point a camera at it, and start fining the cars entering the zone while there's still a car in it. It's trivial, used in other countries already, and would make the roads massively safer. And more than likely make traffic flow better, because it would massively reduce the number of traffic jams due to unsafe driving causing mass braking.

        • My wife's 2019 Outback has adaptive cruise (and automatic braking). It is quite nice to use in the typical sort of midday traffic we have around here, where you can do the speed limit + much of the time but you regularly run into slightly congested stretches. But even though it can handle heavier traffic as well, I turn it off for the very reason you note - people cut into small spaces with no warning, mostly without signalling, and letting the car handle that is more anxiety producing than me doing it myse

        • "Just paint a zone on the road, point a camera at it, and start fining the cars entering the zone while there's still a car in it. It's trivial, used in other countries already"

          Where? Not an intersection or cross-road, but cars going in the same direction?

          • In front of a highway overpass. Perfect place for a camera to look down at a zone in the road.

            You know the posted speed limit, so a quick bit of math and you can determine the safe following distance. And a visual marker on the ground helps teach drivers exactly how far from the car in front of them they should be.

            It's seemingly a lesson that 90% of drivers need to revisit.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

              And how do you know that the first car to pass under the bridge didn't jump in front of the other because "there was space"? It's like a swoop and squat "accident" only in this case it's pass and cut off to get the guy behind you a ticket.

    • I've found that for most people, they equate following distance with speed. Or perhaps it's an emotional reaction to not going as fast as they want. But you tell by observing people that if there is someone in front of them, if they don't ride their butt, they don't feel like they are going fast enough. It's like people's brains can't comprehend that they are an entire derivative apart / integral apart. Even if I drive a quarter mile behind someone, if we are both going 60mph, it literally only takes me 15

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        That 15 seconds may be the difference between catching a light and being stuck for several minutes, though. That's why everyone bunches up, they don't want to be the first guy that has to stop for the yellow.

  • Some drivers clearly need automatic acceleration for use-cases such as on-ramps and not cutting off a larger, heavier vehicle while trying to change lanes on an otherwise open highway.

  • As expected, this shows that drivers are now 50% less capable than prior decades.

  • It would be nice to see independent analysis that took proper care to address confounding variables and not simply driven by organizations standing to make billions from new mandates.

    To not even know if AEB technology was actually in use or whether other "advanced" driver assistance tools were employed are quite substantive deficiencies. For example maybe these vehicles are also equipped with adaptive cruise control and proper computer maintained following distance drove these outcomes not AEB itself. How

    • This "safety feature" is simply there to save the asses of those shitheads who test while driving. It's nice that it can also save the people they would have hit, but the selfish fucktards who fuck with their phones while driving don't care about that.

  • I hate it, but it's saved my butt (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @11:04AM (#63053101)

    One of my cars has automatic braking. There are times where it's a PITA, but it's saved me from low-speed bumps a couple of times. It's made a few mistakes in the last year, but it's saved me more than hurt me.

    The problem with automatic braking is when it "sees" behavior and objects that might be crash. There are times when I was trying to hop out into a hole in traffic that it classifies as "crash" and brakes which is actually quite dangerous.

    • Have had a car with it for four months, it's saved me once. Driving along a quiet country road, distracted by kids and someone failed to give way in front of me. The automatic braking avoided a nasty T-bone accident. The collision warning system is much more annoying - it really doesn't get that our local authority often forces us to drive on the wrong side of the road, toward a car facing us, as a "traffic calming measure" and warns that you're about to hit another car. But it's never close enough that

    • The only time mine has activated was while I was going through an intersection taking a right hand turn. I knew that traffic was slowed or stopped on that road due to the light up ahead, but when the car started making alarm sounds I instinctively looked down at the dashboard because it wasn't clear to me what the car was complaining about.

      Randomly shrieking alarms during times when I need to be paying attention is the opposite of helpful. And I couldn't tell you right now what the "cars are stopping ahead

  • How many accidents would be avoided if cell phones disabled texting in a car? I think there would be far fewer accidents (and not just rear enders) if a system of disabling texting for drivers was setup. Nah, never gonna happen, personal freedoms.

    • You could get support for a regulation disabling texting for drivers, if you could magically make it not disable texting for passengers. Good luck.

  • Every vehicle I've owned with this auto collision avoidance feature in it has triggered randomly for no discernible reason (such as the one in my Ford Bronco Sport), or activated itself a bit late (as I was already manually braking and ready to change lanes if feasible to avoid hitting someone who suddenly stopped in front of me on the interstate).

    These situations could easily CAUSE an accident.
     

  • Said it before, and I'll say it again. Needy drivers cause crashes.

  • A year ago I was in traffic on a freeway which came to a sudden stop. My Tesla successfully stopped.
    Unfortunately, the car behind me was driven by a typical clueless wetware driver without AEB. It ran into me from behind.

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