— Automatic emergency braking (AEB) technology in pickup trucks can lower crash rates, but recent research indicates automakers have been slow to equip pickups with the safety features.
Automatic emergency braking uses cameras, radar, sensors or lidar to detect when a vehicle is moving too fast and getting ready to hit a forward vehicle.
A driver will likely hear a warning to slow down and the brakes will automatically be applied if the driver fails to respond to the warning.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) looked at crashes involving pickup trucks in 25 states between 2017 and 2020 and calculated the rate at which pickups rear-ended other vehicles.
Pickup trucks equipped with automatic emergency braking had a 43% lower crash rate compared to pickups without the technology. In addition, rear-end injury crash rates were 42% lower.
The AEB research is important because due to its weight and size, a pickup truck is more likely to kill a pedestrian than a typical car, and pickups are 2½ times more likely to kill a car driver in a two-vehicle crash.
But IIHS says automakers have been slow to equip pickups with automatic emergency braking compared to other vehicles. Researchers say AEB was standard equipment on 5% of pickup trucks in 2021. But the technology was standard on 10% of cars and 18% of SUVs.
Instead of the government mandating AEB as standard on all vehicles, safety regulators allowed automakers to abide by a voluntary agreement. Without federal regulations, automakers are free to choose which vehicles come equipped with the technology.
Previous IIHS research showed pickup trucks that weren't equipped with AEB also lacked pedestrian detection technology. The systems can help reduce pedestrian crashes by about 27%, but on dark roads the technology was nothing to brag about.
Additionally, automatic emergency braking is far from guaranteed to function at higher speeds, and several manufacturers have experienced problems with the systems activating without any threats of hitting forward objects.
