IIHS study finds some cars with automatic braking didn’t even slow when approaching dummies wearing reflective strips
Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) designed to increase pedestrian safety might not be able to see clothing designed to increase pedestrian visibility. So says the latest research from the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
The news was not good for the legion of cyclists and roadway workers — not to mention motorcyclists and paranoid pedestrians — who adopt high-vis clothing specifically to be seen by motorists. The test saw all three cars driving 25 miles per hour — 40 kilometres an hour — on dimly lit roads (once with no illumination, then with 10 lux of illumination, and then 20 lux, the British standard for crosswalks).
Overall, the Honda and the Mazda hit the dummies 84% and 88% of the time, respectively, while the Subaru managed to stop in time all but once. Just as interesting is that while the Honda and Mazda sometimes at least slowed down — both when they had their high-beams on, or with low-beams on but in the more-illuminated 20-lux conditions — neither vehicle “slowed down at all when the dummy was wearing clothing with reflective strips that articulated its limbs.”
It gets worse. When the dummy was dressed in the reflective jacket, the CR-V didn’t slow in any of the trials, regardless of additional roadway lighting, though the CX-5 did manage to slow down more in this case compared with the dummy dressed in plain black in the no-light and 10-lux test. Counter-intuitively, in the 20-lux lighting scenario, the Mazda performed worse with the dummy in the reflective jacket than when it was wearing the black outfit.
When the dummy was dressed in white, the CR-V didn’t slow at all without added roadway illumination, but notched up its best performances with 10 and 20 lux of added light (it did, however, do better with 10 lux of illumination than with 20 lux).
Unlike the two other vehicles, the Subaru came to a complete stop without hitting the pedestrian dummy in every trial, except one run in which the dummy was wearing clothing with reflective strips and the roadway was illuminated to 10 lux. However, even in that run, it slowed by more than 80%.
According to the author of the study, David Kidd, the placement and motion of the reflective strips is supposed to allow drivers to quickly recognize the pattern of movement as a person. “Unfortunately,” said the senior research scientist, “the moving strips didn’t have the same effect for the pedestrian AEB systems we tested and probably confounded their sensors.”
That said, the IIHS says it is unsure why the Honda and Mazda had such trouble recognizing the reflective strips or “how many other systems might have trouble identifying pedestrians wearing this type of clothing.” Whatever the case, the lapse is a concern, and the Institute recommends further research to determine how crash avoidance systems respond to the specific safety equipment used by such workers.
“These results suggest that some automakers need to tweak their pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems,” said IIHS President David Harkey in an unusually frank statement. “It’s untenable that the clothes that pedestrians, cyclists and roadway workers wear to be safe may make them harder for crash avoidance technology to recognize.”
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