Research Predicts Automatic Braking Systems on Autos Will Help Save Lives

Rear-end collisions is the second highest cause of automobile crashes with 17 percent. Thousands of people die. Sp what's the solution? Clay Gabler, a professor at Virginia Tech said, "It is simple." "Slow the striking vehicle." The concept is simple. Execution is complex and expensive. But in a life-and-death scenario, it is worth the investment, agree Gabler and Kristofer Kusano of Herndon, Va., a doctoral student in mechanical engineering. In affiliation with the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest Center for Injury Biomechanics and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, they are conducting research on the potential benefit of a suite of collision avoidance systems now available as options on some new cars.

Their research, which has been published in peer-reviewed journals, predicts that the use of three systems may reduce serious injuries by 50 percent.

Gabler and Kusano are looking at three systems that can operate independently or in sequence to prevent or mitigate a front collision. They have looked at one generic system that begins with a warning 1.7 seconds before a potential crash. Once alerted, if the driver begins to apply the brakes, there is brake assistance. "The car says, 'Let me show you how to do it more effectively and applies the necessary braking force'," said Gabler.

Finally, 0.45 seconds before the collision, the car will add 0.6 G to the braking effort, or if there is no braking, will apply the brakes autonomously.

"These systems require radar and sophisticated computers. So there is a lot of interest in determining how efficient they could be to guide development," said Kusano.

He and Gabler looked at collisions from the National Automotive Sampling System/Crashworthiness Data System for 1993 to 2008. U.S. Department of Transportation crash teams look at about 5,000 crashes a year out of some 6 million police-reported crashes. Investigation includes photographing and diagramming the scene of the collision, collecting information from police and medical records, conducting interviews with the occupants, and measuring damage to the vehicles. To be investigated, crashes must involve at least one passenger vehicle, and at least one vehicle must have been towed from the scene due to damage.

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The Virginia Tech researchers extracted 1,396 incidents of rear-end collisions from this database and looked at them on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the intelligent vehicle systems being studied would have been called into play and, if so, how they would have helped.

Kusano and Gabler's research appears in the paper, "Safety Benefits of Forward Collision Warning, Brake Assist, and Autonomous Braking Systems in Rear-End Collisions," published online in April as an early access article for inclusion in a future issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

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"Warning works in alerting a distracted driver so they apply the brakes," said Gabler. The study of the crashes determined that 71 percent of the drivers were braking and 29 percent were not. Simulations were run of the crashes, and then assisted or autonomous braking was simulated.

The research showed that 7.7 percent of crashes would be prevented by use of all three systems – warning, assisted braking, and autonomous braking. "We looked at one generic system with a 1.7 second warning. If the warning were sooner, it would prevent more crashes, but there would also be false alarms, which results in drivers turning the systems off or ignoring warnings," Gabler said.

Source-Eurekalert