According to the latest edition of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Status Report, if all vehicles had been equipped with autobrake, there would have been at least 700,000 fewer police-reported rear-end crashes in 2013. That number represents an overall reduction of 13 percent in police-reported crashes.
IIHS conducted its first study of the feature’s effectiveness using U.S. police-reported crash data.
Systems with automatic braking reduce rear-end crashes by about 40 percent on average, while forward collision warning alone cuts them by 23 percent. The autobrake systems also greatly reduce injury crashes.
“The success of front crash prevention represents