Safety Benefits of Automatic Emergency Braking Systems in France

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. Risk of injury curves were developed using the U.S. databases for varying impact speeds. Benefits were derived from an earlier model that predicted revised injury outcomes. The results showed that if fitted to the whole passenger vehicle fleet in France, the AEBS specified here could save 63 (1.4%) of all road fatalities and 1,569 (4%) of serious injuries that occur annually on French roads. These benefits would be cumulative across subsequent years. Despite some limitations associated with this analysis, the findings give support for the widespread fitment of this technology across the French passenger vehicle fleet, and presumably more generally across Europe and other countries.