Study of Automatic Emergency Braking Effects on Belted Human and Surrogate Passengers

The influence of modern Automatic Emergency Braking on the head and neck behavior of the occupants in a vehicle is an emerging area of study. Occupant kinematics and kinetics were evaluated using a vehicle equipped with a pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) system. The vehicle was tested in several different scenarios from speeds of nominally 15 through 50 mph. Two instrumented 50th percentile male Hybrid-III Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATD) were positioned in the right front and right rear seats of the SUV, while minimally instrumented human volunteers were seated in the left front and left rear seats. Displacement transducers and video analysis were utilized to capture the kinematics of each occupant. The results of this study indicate that AEB only events with the subject vehicle did not result in any ATD or volunteer motion that would have placed the occupants out of position (OOP) had an impact event occurred immediately following the AEB event. This means that when evaluating real-world AEB events, it may not be necessary to analyze and model properly seated and restrained occupant kinematics prior to an impact event when AEB occurs. The kinetic results show that the occupant exposure is below any accepted injury criteria and comparable to routine activities of daily living.