If all vehicles had been equipped with autobrake, there would have been at least 700,000 fewer police-reported rear-end crashes in 2013.
Vehicles equipped with front crash prevention are much less likely to rear-end other vehicles, IIHS has found in the first study of the feature’s effectiveness using U.S. police-reported crash data.
Systems with automatic braking reduce rear-end crashes by about 40 percent on average, while forward collision warning alone cuts them by 23 percent, the study found. The autobrake systems also greatly reduce injury crashes.
If all vehicles had been equipped with autobrake that worked as well as the systems studied, there would have been at least 700,000 fewer police-reported rear-end crashes in 2013. That number represents 13 percent of police-reported crashes overall.
“The success of front crash prevention represents a big step toward safer roads,” says David Zuby, IIHS chief research officer. “As this technology becomes more widespread, we can expect to see noticeably fewer rear-end crashes. The same goes for the whiplash injuries that often result from these crashes and can cause a lot of pain and lost productivity.”
Front crash prevention is steadily becoming more prevalent, but in most cases it is offered as optional equipment. That may soon change, however. In September, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and IIHS announced an agreement in principle with automakers to make autobrake standard on all models.
The new IIHS findings are in line with earlier research by HLDI based on insurance claim rates (see “Evidence continues to mount in favor of front crash prevention,” Aug. 26, 2015, and Status Report special issue: crash avoidance, July 3, 2012).
Using police reports allows researchers to identify front-to-rear crashes in order to gauge front crash prevention systems’ effectiveness specifically for the type of collision they are designed to address.
For the study, researchers looked at police-reported rear-end crashes in 22 states during 2010-14 involving Acura, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru and Volvo vehicles with optional front crash prevention. The crash s of vehicles equipped with the technology were compared with the crash rates of the same models without front crash prevention. Individual vehicles with the technology were identified using trim level information or, in some cases, lists of vehicle identification numbers supplied by the manufacturers.
Read the entire article on the IIHS Website.
