Hi, I’m Mark Phillips, and in this Aftermarket Intel Briefing, we’re going to do an overview of automatic emergency braking and why it’s a technology we all need to get more familiar with.
Automatic emergency braking or AEB, is part of a larger grouping of technologies called advanced driver assistance technologies or ADAS for short. ADAS has its roots about 50 years ago, when the first anti-lock braking systems began appearing on vehicles. Since then, ADAS has made a number of strides, one of them being automatic emergency braking or AEB, for short.
Automatic braking systems may be called a variety of names — sometimes autonomous emergency braking — but it all does the same basic thing: Stop a vehicle before an accident. In vehicles with assistive cruise control, systems can also slow a vehicle or throttle it down to stay a safe distance from the vehicle ahead. Before a collision is averted (hopefully!), a vehicle can warn of an impending crash. Vehicles do this by audible and visual alerts in the dashboard.
The vehicle then takes over braking if it senses the driver will not stop in time. A vehicle can either stop the vehicle entirely, without assistance from the driver or sense that the driver isn’t applying enough pressure to the brake pedal and step in to assist. How a vehicle “makes” the decision to stop — well, itself — can be made through a number of technologies.
Some of these include radar, Lidar, infrared or ultrasonic sensors that look in front of the vehicle to anticipate problems. Other systems use dual cameras. But no matter what system a vehicle uses to stop a vehicle, the mechanism to actually apply friction to the rotors is the same as it’s been for decades. And if those components aren’t in good working order, the AEB system won’t perform as well as it should.
Many automakers have committed to making AEB standard on virtually all light-duty cars and trucks that have a gross vehicle weight of 8,500 pounds or less by Sept. 1, 2022. A number of car manufacturers have already met the challenge ahead of schedule.
For trucks with a gross vehicle weight of 8,501 lbs. and 10,000 lbs., there’s a deadline of no later than September 1, 2025. Research from The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety or IIHS shows that if vehicle manufacturers meet their commitment, it would reduce rear-end collisions by 40 percent.
That will be welcome news to everyone. After all, in 2019, 36,096 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the United States.
Research has shown that the vast number of vehicle crashes are tied to human error, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. So, automotive emergency braking will be a welcome feature on new vehicles.
I’m Mark Phillips and thanks for watching! For more information about our sponsor, visit sangsinusa.com.
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