Simulating Automated Emergency Braking with and without Torricelli Vacuum Emergency Braking for cyclists: Effect of brake deceleration and sensor field-of-view on accidents, injuries and fatalities

Abstract

This study estimates how many additional cyclist accidents, injuries or fatalities are avoided or mitigated by adding a system which increases braking levels, the Torricelli Vacuum Emergency Brake (VEB), to a state-of-the-art Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) system. To obtain a realistic state-of-the-art AEB system, the AEB parameter settings were defined to fulfil but not exceed the performance necessary to achieve a full score in the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP). The systems are simulated in a simple but realistic simulation model in MATLAB with varying brake deceleration and sensor field-of-view (FoV).This study utilised data from the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS), released in January 2019, and the related Pre-Crash Matrix (PCM), released in February 2019. Cyclist Injury Risk Curves were created from 2,662 GIDAS accidents involving a passenger car and a cyclist. The sample of cyclist accidents from the GIDAS-PCM database used in the final simulations comprised 1,340 collisions between the front of a passenger car and a cyclist. Both data samples were weighted to be representative of Germany as a whole.Adding the VEB was found to avoid over 20% more accidents than the AEB alone. Although increasing the FoV from 75° to 180° for the AEB system increases its accident avoidance rate to a level comparable to the VEB, the VEB remains about 8–20% more effective in reducing fatalities and injuries, and thus offers greater safety benefits than simply increasing AEB FoV.While the initial accidents in the representative simulation sample are fairly evenly distributed over the vehicle front, the remaining accidents (those that cannot be prevented by AEB or VEB) are more concentrated at the vehicle corners and are further characterized by high cyclist speeds. High cyclist speeds and impact to the vehicle corners potentially increase the relative frequency of head impacts to the stiff A-pillars. We therefore recommend that, for passenger cars, VEB and other advanced AEB systems should be combined with in-crash protection, especially in the A-pillar area, to best protect cyclists from injury.