The number of vehicles equipped with automatic emergency braking systems is rising. Today most high-end auto makers offer pre-crash systems with a sensor-based collision warning feature. These systems warn the driver both audibly and visually when their sensors detect an imminent crash. Depending on system range, the occupants are moved into an optimized position, seat belts are pretensioned and the brakes are prepared for faster or, if necessary, maximum deceleration. A key feature of these systems is their ability to provide autonomous partial to full emergency braking in critical situations, thereby reducing collision speeds.
Until now, crash tests have failed to mirror accident situations in which vehicles are braked prior to impact. Thus, it has not been possible to test the effectiveness of pre-crash occupant positioning or to reproducibly analyze the benefits of occupant preconditioning by pre-crash systems.
This paper will give a statistical overview of the incidence of frontal impact accidents. It will also present a crash test on a BMW 5 series equipped with a prototype pre-crash system and automatic full emergency braking. The car is decelerated automatically from the Euro NCAP test speed of 64 kph to 40 kph whilst still being routed by the crash test centre's intelligent hauling system. This test was conducted complementary to the efforts of the vFSS Working Group (Advanced Forward-looking Safety Systems).