A Velodyne white paper, published by SAE International, calls for independent performance testing of driver assistance systems to be expanded to include dark, nighttime scenarios, as more than 75 percent of pedestrian fatalities occur in low-to-no light conditions, reported Automotive World.

The change would address current testing protocols that primarily look at daytime conditions and largely overlook the risks to pedestrians from driver assistance systems which perform poorly in dark, night-time conditions, wrote Anthony Davis in Highways Today.

The white paper, called “Designing and assessing vehicle safety functions with a use case approach,” is available on the SAE International website. It can also be downloaded from the Velodyne website.

Most new vehicles offer advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), equipped with Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking (PAEB) as a standard optional feature, noted Sensors & Systems.

To demonstrate how expanded testing would work, the white paper details the results of nighttime PAEB tests conducted by Velodyne. In nighttime conditions, a camera and radar-based PAEB system failed in all five scenarios while a lidar-based system avoided a crash in every situation tested, according to a GIS Café story.

A story in The Auto Channel quoted Mircea Gradu, SVP of Automotive Programs, Velodyne Lidar, saying:

“PAEB systems can potentially have safety hazards related to nighttime driving and speed without system failure. Their performance can fall short under these real-world conditions due to limitations of sensors or software. Accurate situational awareness by ADAS and AVs is essential to safety.”