The clothing that makes pedestrians stand out to human drivers may make them invisible to automated crash prevention systems, a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests.
“These results suggest that some automakers need to tweak their pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems,” said IIHS President David Harkey. “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.”
Past IIHS research has shown that, in general, pedestrian automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems reduce the rate of pedestrian crashes of all severities by 27%. However, on dark roads, the effect of pedestrian AEB on crash risk is negligible. That’s a serious problem, as most fatal pedestrian crashes happen at night.