Advancements of driver assistance systems, including automatic braking technology, has led to a significant reduction in rear-end crashes, a recent study found.
Vehicles produced between 2021 and 2023, equipped with AEB saw a 52% reduction in rear-end crashes compared to a 46% reduction in vehicles with similar systems built between 2015 and 2017, according to a study published in January by the Partnership for Analytics Research in Traffic Safety. The partnership is a collaboration between the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and several major automakers.
“The industry has voluntarily developed and deployed these crash avoidance systems,” Jennifer Morrison, PARTS communications chair and head of vehicle safety for Mazda North American Operations, said in a statement. “We can now see a trend in their life-saving capabilities and can focus our efforts on continuing that trend.”
PARTS consortium members voluntarily share data to analyze the effectiveness of safety technologies and support the development of safer vehicles. The latest study included data from Ford Motor Co., General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Stellantis, Subaru and Toyota.
The researchers also linked automaker data from 98 million vehicles representing 168 vehicle models manufactured between 2015 and 2023 with police crash report data provided by the NHTSA that covered 21.1 million crashes in 16 states. About 10% of these crashes — 2.1 million — involved an automatic crash avoidance system and were included in the analysis.
The study found that AEB systems reduced rear-end crashes by 49% across the vehicle model years. In addition, AEB technology focused on avoiding pedestrians — known as pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems — reduced crashes with non-motorists, including cyclists, by 9%.
According to researchers, the results will be used to further analyze the effectiveness of crash avoidance systems, including determining whether systems were actually activated when a crash occurred.
Future studies will incorporate data from Kia, which recently joined the PARTS consortium.
