The Times has an article on a study by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the US which found that Automatic Emergency Braking systems on many modern cars were “blind” to pedestrians wearing reflective material.
by Old_Bug_6773
The Times has an article on a study by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the US which found that Automatic Emergency Braking systems on many modern cars were “blind” to pedestrians wearing reflective material.
by Old_Bug_6773
9 Comments
What as in they’re worse at spotting people in high vis than in regular clothes? Or are they just bad with people in general?
I’m pretty sure hi-vis is also invisible to human drivers. The only time I was hit was when I was wearing a hi-vis vest, and I don’t wear one very often. My sister in law was also hit wearing hi-vis.
Really wish the article wasn’t paywalled so I could see if it has anything useful to say.
I’ve nearly been hit more often while wearing hi-viz so I don’t bother anymore. It’s amazing, I’ll be just riding along, in full view of the driver for a long ways and they’ll just pull out in front of me.
I’m still going to wear it especially during dawn/sunset/night.
I feel safer as a cyclist when wearing it, I feel more aware as a driver when I see others wearing it.
One car model stopped or slowed in all 3 cases in this study.
Two others didn’t stop or slow at all.
So the root cause is human design & testing failure.
https://paywallbuster.com/
I drove a company car recently that is a Subaru Forrester like the one in the test and the AEB activated once when someone braked quickly to make an unsignaled last second turn. I was already breaking but the system freaked out and slammed on the brakes. Fortunately we had just started from a red light so the tailgating driver behind me wasn’t going too fast and was able to avoid rear ending me.
When using cruise control it does a similar thing and will brake suddenly and too hard for the scenario. All that to say I wasn’t impressed.
I used to have a gilet where the fabric was reflective all over. I say used to because someone collided with me head-on while I was wearing it. Tearing the gilet was the least of my worries, but I still fail to understand how they didn’t see me.
I wear it just so I can be extra sarcastic when drivers almost hit me (what, you didn’t see me) and so they don’t blame me for my death (they will anyway. But it’s mostly just a superstitious talisman.