Reverse Automatic Emergency Braking Doesn’t Really Work

As it turns out, reverse automatic emergency braking may not be doing much to prevent crashes. In a AAA study, the systems repeatedly had a hard time stopping reversing crashes from happening.

AAA Offers an Emergency Charging Solution When Your EV Runs Out of Range

In one test scenario that involved vehicles backing into the path of an oncoming car, AAA found that the reverse AEB system only prevented one in 40 crashes, according to Automotive News. That is astonishingly low. Despite that catastrophic success rate, vehicles still braked in 65 percent of the scenarios. Still, that’s nowhere near good enough.

In a different scenario, AAA evaluated how the systems performed when backing from a parking space toward a stationary child who is too dumb to look where they’re going (I added that last bit.) Anyway, the system did actually fare much better in this test – applying the brakes 75 percent of the time, and preventing half the crashes, AutoNews reports.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like those numbers should still be higher, and AAA’s director of automotive engineering, Greg Brannon, agrees, according to Automotive News.

“We were very surprised by the sort of lack of performance, or consistent performance, in the child pedestrian scenario,” he said. “We actually expected that to be 100 percent across the board.”

[…]

The middling results from the reverse AEB tests underscored the need for standards for the technology, Brannon said. He further feared the presence of the systems would lead to driver complacency.

”We’re worried that, over time, people will come to overrely on them, and that overreliance will diminish the effectiveness of the system,” he said. “So we really feel like the absence of test standards is something that we do address as an industry.”

[…]

Brannon said AAA has further testing scheduled for 2024.

The organization is examining the progression from older systems to newer ones “to understand if automakers are actually getting better at building systems that are more effective,” he said.

There were four vehicles used in AAA’s test – all 2023 models. They were the Hyundai Tuscon Hybrid, Lexus RX350, Mazda CX-30 2.5 Turbo and Volkswagen Tiguan 2.0T. That’s not exactly a wide scope in body types, but I suppose they’re all very popular crossovers.

AAA and others are hoping these types of systems will actually improve safety for pedestrians, according to Automotive News. A study done in 2023 by AAA suggests that advanced driver assist systems could save a quarter million lives over the next three decades.