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Over the past decade, manufacturers have introduced vehicles equipped with Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) into the North American market. These vehicles have the capability to not only detect an impending collision and warn the driver, but also to initiate braking independent of the driver. The collision avoidance strategies used by the various manufacturers have not been studied extensively. In 2013, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) began testing vehicles equipped with AEB in rear-end collision situations in order to issue their front crash prevention safety ratings for these vehicles. To date, over 180 vehicles from 31 manufactures spanning model years 2013 to 2018 have been tested. This paper presents an analysis of the data collected in these tests. The objective of the study was to assess the differences in performance and strategies used, at two different closing speeds, between manufacturers.

Collision reconstruction often involves calculations and computer simulations, which require an estimation of the weights of the involved vehicles. Although weight data is readily available for automobiles and light trucks, there is limited data for heavy vehicles, such as tractor-semitrailers, straight trucks, and the wide variety of trailers and combinations that may be encountered on North American roads. Although manufacturers always provide the gross vehicle weight ratings (GVWR) for these vehicles, tare weights are often more difficult to find, and in-service loading levels are often unknown. The resulting large uncertainty in the weight of a given truck can often affect reconstruction results. In Canada, the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario conducted a Commercial Vehicle Survey in 2012 that consisted of weight sampling over 45,000 heavy vehicles of various configurations.