BMW X1 gets ‘no credit’ in IIHS pedestrian AEB testing
BMW's littlest crossover hasn't exactly put its best foot forward with the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, comprehensively obliterating a dummy in AEB testing.
The BMW X1 has completely flunked pedestrian autonomous emergency braking testing conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
So poor was its performance, the littlest BMW crossover was the only vehicle to not be rated in a test of 11 compact SUVs. The second-worst rated car was the Mitsubishi Outlander, while the Honda CR-V, Subaru Forester, Toyota RAV4 and Volvo XC40 took top ratings.
The Holden Equinox, badged Chevrolet in the States, along with the Hyundai Kona, Kia Sportage, Mazda CX-5 and Nissan X-Trail, badged Rogue, earned a second-from-top 'advanced' rating.
There were three tests for the auto-brake systems: a perpendicular child scenario, where a short dummy 'runs out' from behind a parked car, a perpendicular adult test, where a taller dummy steps into the road, and another adult test where the cars had more time to react.
As you can see in the video above, the X1 barrels straight through the dummy in all the tests, showing minimal or no speed reduction.
The Outlander fared slightly better, dropping its speed by 80 per cent in the simplest adult test and delivering "minimal" reductions in the other two, while the RAV4 and Forester managed to avoid the dummies in every single test.
"The best possible outcome is to avoid hitting a pedestrian altogether," said David Aylor, manager of active safety testing at the IIHS.
"When a crash is unavoidable, sharply reducing a vehicle's travel speed would give someone on foot a far greater chance of surviving any injuries in a similar real-world encounter with a passenger vehicle."
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