With the democratization of safety systems that operate at varying degrees of automation, many drivers believe they can rely on them during emergency manoeuvres. However, according to a recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), these systems are not all equally effective when the veil of night envelops our journeys.
Posted at 11:45 a.m.
The IIHS exercise seeks to shed light on the performance of these systems in intervening when vehicles encounter pedestrians in the dark. A total of 23 models from various segments were tested using a mobile dummy. A scenario seeks to evaluate the reaction of the system when it has to negotiate with a pedestrian crossing the path in front of the vehicle at speeds of 19 km/h and 40 km/h. The second positions the dummy in motion along the road while the vehicle is traveling at 40 km/h or 60 km/h. The systems are tested with the headlights set to normal and high intensity.
Only four vehicles, namely the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Nissan Pathfinder, Toyota Camry and Toyota Highlander, obtained the highest possible score. At the bottom of the list, four other models—the Chevrolet Malibu, Honda Pilot, Nissan Altima and Toyota Tacoma—walked away with “no credit” due to no system intervention or clearly too limited. This clashes with the results collected during these same tests conducted in daylight, during which 19 of the 23 models tested had the same score.
The IIHS therefore calls on manufacturers to improve the performance of these systems at a time when the American authorities are noting an 80% increase in pedestrian deaths if we compare the year 2021 to the results of 2009.