WRITE A PROBLEM SOLVING- REPORT

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YOU ARE TASKED WITH WRITING A PROBLEM REPORT ON

THESE AUTOMATIC BRAKING SYSTEMS AND ARE SENDING THIS OFF TO A

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We Crash Four Cars Repeatedly to Test

the Latest Automatic Braking Safety

Systems

This technology is intended to reduce the millions

of rear-end collisions that happen every year.

By

ERIC TINGWALL

NOV 5, 2018

Andi Hedrick

Car and Driver

The kick-drum thump of a harmless 30-mph shunt into an inflatable

faux car rouses the same visceral remorse as a real car crash. The

stomach knots with nausea. Mortification burns deep in every

muscle. Within seconds, the brain catalogs the near trauma under

Things That Should Not Be Repeated, right next to beer pong

played with Captain Morgan.

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Against our instincts, we keep taking runs at the balloon car. We

nudge, punch, and plow into the generic air-filled Volks

wagen

again and again and again, not unlike American drivers, who, in

2016, drove into the back ends of other vehicles 2.4 million times.

The rear-end collision is America's favorite way to bend sheetmetal,

accounting for nearly one-third of all crashes.

But for every hit in our testing, there are several more kamikaze

runs where the test car shudders to a halt just inches from the half-

a-car punching bag. This is the work of automated emergency

braking (AEB), which can detect an imminent rear-end collision and

apply the brakes to mitigate or prevent the impact. Twenty

automakers, whose products account for 99 percent of all new-

vehicle sales in the U.S., have agreed to equip their full lineups of

cars, SUVs, and light-duty trucks with AEB by 2022. But you don't

have to wait. AEB is already ubiquitous in new vehicles at every

price point, either as standard or optional equipment, and the data

suggests that it's working as intended. A 2016 Insurance Institute

for Highway Safety study found that vehicles equipped with

forward-collision warning (an audible, visual, and/or vibrating alert

given when the system detects a hazard ahead) and AEB were

involved in 39 percent fewer rear-end crashes than vehicles without

the technologies.

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To understand the strengths and weaknesses of these systems and

how they differ, we piloted

a Cadillac CT6

,

a Subaru Impreza

,

a

Tesla Model S

, and

a Toyota Camry

through four tests at FT Techno

of America's Fowlerville, Michigan, proving ground. The balloon

car is built like a bounce house but with the radar reflectivity of a

real car, along with a five-figure price and a Volks

wagen wrapper.

For the tests with a moving target, a heavy-duty pickup tows the

balloon car on 42-foot rails, which allow it to slide forward afte