The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has released their new pedestrian crash prevention ratings.  Eleven small utilities are ranked based on their ability to automatically avoid or reduce the severity of a crash with pedestrian dummies.  Researchers looked at three different scenarios at different speeds.  The 2018–19 Honda CR-V, 2019 Subaru Forester, 2019 Toyota RAV4 and 2019 Volvo XC40 earn the highest rating of superior.

Pedestrian detection systems generally use a combination of cameras and radar sensors to scan the road for people.  Some are designed to detect bicyclists and animals.  The pedestrian autobrake test is one of four ways the IIHS looks at avoiding crashes.  The other three are front crash prevention systems, headlights, and rear crash prevention systems. In 2017, 5,977 pedestrians died in crashes in the U.S.  That’s slightly less than the year before, but 45% higher than 1990 when the least number of pedestrian deaths were reported.