Studies Estimate Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) System Adoption for Truck Fleets in USA Could Lead to a Benefit-Cost Ratio of up to 3.75 Depending on Cost Scenarios and Discount Rates.
Study Evaluating Benefits and Costs of a Nationwide Adoption of AEB Systems for Trucks Finds Feasible Options.
Nationwide, United States
Leveraging Large-Truck Technology and Engineering to Realize Safety Gains: Automatic Emergency Braking Systems
Summary Information
Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) systems combine sensors, driver alerts, and automatic vehicle braking to reduce or prevent rear-end collisions. If the driver fails to react to an imminent crash on time, the AEB system takes control of the vehicle’s brakes. This study estimated the societal benefits and costs of AEB systems in large trucks, through an expert advisory panel which convened in May 2016 and consisted of six members from various parts of the trucking industry.
METHODOLOGY
The expert panel which was consulted in this study recommended efficacy rates of 16-28 percent to reflect performance capabilities of AEB systems in reducing crashes. The benefit cost analysis assumed a low, average, and high cost of $500, $2,500, and $3,000 per truck, respectively, based on the results from an extensive literature survey and vendor feedback. The societal benefits of the AEB systems associated with a reduction in crashes were estimated for potentially deploying the AEB systems across the entire USA fleet of large trucks. For cost analysis, national crash databases were used to identify the population of crashes that AEB systems could potentially prevent.
The benefits considered in this study included savings on medical costs, emergency response service costs, property damage, lost productivity, and monetized value of quality-of-life changes experienced by families in a death or injury accident. Costs included system hardware purchase, installation, and financing costs, maintenance costs, replacement costs, and costs associated with training for drivers and managers. The first set of analyses included the scenario of retrofitting the entire USA fleet of large trucks. The second set of analyses used an annual incremental costs analysis approach, assuming all new vehicles would be equipped with AEB systems.
FINDINGS
- The results showed that, considering all large trucks at high AEB efficacy rate of 28 percent, a benefit-cost ratio of up to 3.75 could be expected, depending on various levels of AEB costs and discount rates.
- The results also indicated that, considering all large trucks at low AEB efficacy rate of 16 percent, a benefit-cost ratio of up to 2.14 could be expected, depending on various levels of AEB costs and discount rates.
