A new study from the US indicates that pedestrians who wear reflective vests to be visible are exactly the opposite of car safety systems.
Pedestrians who wear reflective vests to be visible in traffic may experience an unexpected risk: They may become invisible to the automated safety systems of modern cars.
A new report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) points out that the reflections that are crucial for visibility during the dark hours can be difficult for some of these systems to detect. This is problematic since most pedestrian accidents occur at night.
IIHS tested the driver assistance systems of three different car brands: the Honda CR-V, Mazda CX-5 and Subaru Forester.
In the test, a mannequin was placed in a pedestrian crossing and dressed in different clothes.
Two of the mannequin's outfits had reflectors – one in white and one in black. The mannequin was then placed in a crosswalk under different lighting conditions (darkness, twilight and 20 lux – the requirement for crosswalk lighting in the US, ed.) to test whether the systems could detect the 'human' at a speed of 40 km/h.
The results varied. But the Honda CR-V and Mazda CX-5 showed clear limitations. Without reflectors, the black dummy performed the worst in the dark, as expected.
Both the Honda and Mazda had problems detecting it. The Mazda slowed down by a good third. While the Honda hit the dummy without braking. With high beams, both cars detected the dummy and braked. At 20 lux of illumination, both cars performed better.
The white dummy was also invisible to the Honda in the dark. While visibility improved slightly at 10 lux (twilight) and 20 lux. The Mazda therefore braked 'best' for the white-clad dummy.
The problems occurred when the doll was wearing a reflective vest.
– When the dummy was wearing the reflective vest, the CR-V did not brake in any of the tests, regardless of the lighting, says the IIHS.
– In contrast, the CX-5 braked more with 10 lux lighting when the dummy was wearing black clothing. But with 20 lux lighting, it performed worse with the reflective vest than with the black clothing alone.
The Subaru Forester generally performed better than the other two cars in the test.
These results raise concerns about pedestrian safety in an era of increasing use of automated driver assistance systems. The European Car of the Year raises some of the same questions. It also did not receive top marks for safety. Read more about it here .
