While we’re still some way off seeing full-blown, self-driving cars winding their way across continental Europe, a more modest autonomous technology has found approval with safety bods. Research conducted by the European road safety research organisation Euro NCAP concluded that having a car automatically slam on the brakes to avoid low-speed accidents leads to a 38 percent reduction in rear-end crashes. The notable statistic was the result of a meta-analysis of various Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) cars, comparing them to cars without the technology in accidents where the car either struck a car in front, or was being struck from behind. Euro NCAP, with support of Australian safety organisation ANCAP, pooled data from five European countries and Australia using a standard analysis format, as well as a prospective meta-analysis approach. In non-AEB cars, the split between striking and being struck was close to 50/50, improving significantly for cars with AEB. However, despite the apparent success of the study, the researchers noted that in order to get the best results out of the technology, widespread adoption was required; slamming on the brakes to avoid an accident requires following traffic to be alert enough to react to the situation and not cause a cascade. They also noted that AEB cars might be more likely to be struck from behind, as an unintended consequence of AEB’s better reaction time, compared to a human driver. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Meta analysis finds self-braking cars reduce collisions by 38 percent