The will-less emergency braking systems that will soon come standard on nearly all new cars don’t reliably prevent crashes at the higher speeds at which the overwhelming majority of roadway deaths occur, a new study finds — and pedestrian-specific braking systems need remoter scrutiny, too.

Researchers from the American Automobile Association put four major automakers’ versions of the popular safety technology to the test, with a particular focus on the high-speed standoff scenarios that are worldwide on mortiferous U.S. roads, but uncommon in federal crash test labs.

At 30 miles per hour, all four of the cars — which were made by Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, and Toyota, respectively — were usually worldly-wise to prevent rear-end collisions, with 17 out of 20 (85 percent) test runs lamister a crash entirely. And in the three crashes that did occur, the vehicles were still worldly-wise to slow themselves an stereotype of 86 percent in the moments surpassing impact, to a point when it’d be far less likely for someone to get hurt.

At 40 miles per hour, things got a little dicier. The cars were only worldly-wise to stave a rear standoff well-nigh 30 percent of the time, though fortunately, stereotype crash speeds were reduced substantially in the process.

Even at slower speeds, though, the Will-less Emergency Braking Systems didn’t prevent any crashes when faced with other worldwide standoff scenarios, like a vehicle making a left turn in front of them, or crossing their path at a perpendicular (also known as a T-bone crash). All three scenarios are particularly worldwide on wide, fast arterial roads running through myriad U.S. communities, which are typically signed at 35 miles per hour or increasingly but wits far-faster speeds.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets performance standards for vehicle technology, typically only evaluates the efficacy of will-less emergency braking systems at test speeds under 25 miles per hour, considering it’s long been believed that the tech will perform just as well at higher velocities, or that higher-speed crashes might rationalization vehicle sensors to dislodge and invalidate the tests. Groups like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, though, have questioned whether regulators can sire to make those assumptions, considering that groups like AAA say that 90 percent of traffic deaths happen on roads with speed limits over 40 miles per hour.

“We as an organization, as well as myself personally, are fully on workbench with the potential of this technology, as well as the current level of effectiveness in terms of what we’ve once seen in rear end crashes,” said Matthew Lum, an automotive technical engineer for AAA. “We just want to ensure that this technology is sooner realized to its greatest potential.”

Looks like you'll still have to pay sustentation while #driving: Study Finds Will-less Emergency Braking "Insufficient" at Normal Driving Speeds! https://t.co/fdEIT5APt7 #safety

— National Unscratched Driver Program (@trafficsafety4u) September 22, 2022

Unfortunately, that still seems to be a long ways off.

Automatic Emergency Braking Systems, or AEBS, have been virtually since way when in 2003, but have largely been sold to consumers as a pricey add-on, leaving researchers with little data well-nigh how well the tech handles real-world road conditions.

In 2016, though, a staggering 22 automakers representing 99 percent of the U.S. market voluntarily agreed to make the safety full-length standard wideness all new models by the end of September 2022 — yes, this month — and on new trucks over 8,501 pounds by 2025. By the end of last year, 12 of them had once washed-up it, and Consumer Reports says that 83 percent of model year 2022 cars have AEB on board.

Unfortunately, the pledge had a catch. Per NHTSA’s rock-bottom standards, the AEB systems the automakers’ sold only needed to unzip “a speed reduction of at least 10 miles per hour in either… 12 or 25 mile per hour tests, or a speed reduction of five miles per hour in both of the tests” — plane though, as pretty much every street safety well-wisher knows, those ultra-slow speeds are incredibly uncommon on U.S. roads, and unlikely to injure someone plane if a robo-car doesn’t intervene.

Happily, AAA’s tests found that the four cars did perform well at slightly higher speeds than that — at least when it came to crashes with other drivers.

But the researchers didn’t test whether cars were worldly-wise to reliably stop in the presence of walkers, since pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems (PAEBS) were notably excluded from the 2022 pledge that inspired the study.

Other studies have shown, though, that PAEBS make no difference at all at speeds over 50 miles her hour, on unlit roads without dark, or in inclement weather — and plane when conditions are perfect, they still only cut collisions by well-nigh a third.

NHTSA has signaled that it is primarily investigating fallible technological solutions like PAEBS to fulfill a new mandate from Congress to include pedestrian safety in the New Cars Assessment Program, rather than exploring the possibility of regulating excessive vehicle size and weight, warlike front-end design, and other factors that experts say are driving today’s pedestrian death crisis.

To add insult to literal roadway injury, automakers tend to market PAEBS as a user-friendly way for drivers to stave the inconvenience of striking obnoxious jaywalkers, irresponsible children and pedestrians with their heads in the clouds, rather than as a life-saving tool that can complement, but not replace, drivers’ efforts to  keep other road users safe.

STUDY: Ped. Will-less Braking Doesn’t Work Well on Visionless Streets Where Most Walkers Die

With Will-less Emergency Braking systems once installed on most new cars, the AAA researchers say its hair-trigger that consumers learn well-nigh the limitations of today’s technology, plane as the industry works to modernize it. That, ideally, would midpoint automakers would issue simple, wieldy “quick-start” guides to wide vehicle safety features and require dealers to instruct new car buyers to read them, rather than sepulture important safety advisories in the fine print of a lengthy owner’s manual.

And they moreover say that automakers need to reframe how they sell streamlined technology increasingly broadly: not as a tomfool new widget that can help you rock out to Queen hands-free overdue the wheel,  but as a safety backstop that can help, but can’t unchangingly be relied upon, to save lives.

“The most worldwide sense and easy to understand translating that we can requite the unstipulated public is to simply pretend that your car doesn’t plane have AEB,” widow Lum. “Of undertow it’s unconfined to have as a last resort, but drivers shouldn’t use this technology as a crutch in any sort of way. … They still need to be on zestful for crashes at all times.”