The Insurance Institue for Highway Safety (IIHS) has beefed up its automatic-emergency braking test because it’s now gotten too easy.
According to the IIHS, that’s because automakers have now met the standards it set when it began the test in 2013.
A lot more vehicles come equipped with automatic-emergency braking now than nine years ago. So the original test, which used speeds of 12 mph and 25 mph, is a bit out of date in the eyes of the IIHS.
“Thankfully, in the real world, AEB systems are preventing crashes at higher speeds than the maximum 25 mph our test program uses,” says IIHS Senior Research Scientist David Kidd, the author of a new paper. “The problem is that our current evaluation doesn’t tell us how well specific systems perform at those speeds.”
The Institute says that around 85 percent of model-year 2022 vehicles have earned a “Superior” rating.
For 2023, the test will use speeds of 35 and 45 mph and be expanded to see how well each system can detect motorcycles and large trucks. This is because rear-end collisions are most common at speeds between 35-45 mph and fatalities are a common occurrence when collisions involve large trucks or motorcycles.
A vehicle needs to score an “Advanced” or “Superior” rating to earn a Top Safety Pick+ nod.
[Image: IIHS]
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