Automatic braking sensors on cars may not actually notice pedestrians wearing safety gear

Ariane Lange, The Sacramento Bee on Jan 9, 2025

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A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests that automated crash prevention systems may fail to detect pedestrians wearing high-visibility clothing that makes them stand out to human drivers.

Nationwide, most fatal pedestrian crashes occur at night. In Sacramento, 20 pedestrians and cyclists were killed in collisions last year, and a significant majority of the crashes occurred at night.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety looked at three 2023 small SUV models that include automatic emergency braking. For the study published this month, an adult pedestrian mannequin in a crosswalk wore reflective strips similar to what construction workers wear for visibility. The institute had previously rated two of the models for nighttime crash prevention using pedestrian mannequins that wore dark clothing.

Two of the vehicle models that the 2025 study tested hit the mannequin as it moved across the lab crosswalk in almost every scenario, though often they slowed down from their 25 mph starting speed. In all but one trial, the Subaru Forester did not hit the mannequin, and it slowed significantly before that collision.

In 2018, when the Sacramento City Council adopted the Vision Zero Action Plan, then-Mayor Darrell Steinberg raised technology as a potential solution to curb severe and fatal crashes.

“All the energy and interest that we are generating in the city around autonomous vehicles — is technology part of the answer here, too, to improve pedestrian safety?” Steinberg asked. He then said that if a technology solution would not be timely, that he wanted to investigate how to step up police enforcement.

Advocates have increasingly pressured the city to move in a different direction over the past year, urging the council to fund infrastructure projects that force drivers to slow down. The council will soon vote on whether to declare a state of emergency over pedestrian and cyclist safety.

Isaac Gonzalez, the founder of Slow Down Sacramento and the vice chair of the city’s Active Transportation Commission, has said that he’d often asked what pedestrians can do to reduce the danger they face. High-visibility clothing is a frequent suggestion, but Gonzalez always points to vehicle speed as the problem.

When collisions occur at slower speeds, pedestrians are far less likely to be injured or killed.

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