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The aim of this study was to assess the crash injury benefits of an Automatic Emergency Braking System (AEBS), for the passenger vehicle population in France. These benefits were examined in regards to the number/proportion of fatalities and serious injured crashes that could be saved per annum. The two crash types investigated included pedestrian crashes and rear-end collisions. AEBS was expected to intervene 0.6sec prior to the crash and at published levels of force according to whether braking previously occurred and the road condition/surface adherence. The analysis involved national crash data, BAAC, collected by the French Ministry of transport, in-depth crash data made available from the European EACS (European Accident Causation Survey) database by LAB, as well as findings from the U.S. NASS/CDS and NHTSA PCDS in-depth databases. A step-wise methodology was used to calculate the crash injury benefits of AEBS across the two crash types.

Crash incompatibility between disparate classes of passenger vehicles is an issue of growing global concern. There is widespread consensus, both in the U.S. and internationally, that any regulation or test procedure focusing on crash compatibility should be a globally harmonized standard. However, this may prove to be a challenging effort due to huge differences in U.S. and international fleet composition. The U.S. fleet is dominated by a growing light truck component, and has few of the sub-1000 kg cars that are prevalent in Australian and European fleets. This paper will examine the structure of the passenger vehicle fleets in the U.S., Europe, and Australia, the relationship between fleet composition and real world crash fatalities and the prospects for a single, globally accepted, crash compatibility test procedure.