Emergency situations rarely occur in a driver's experience and the braking and steering manoeuvres that are then required are usually outside the routine physical behaviour ranges. Immediate reactions are automatic and are therefore unlikely to include physical movements that go beyond these limits. It has always been difficult, however, to prove this because simulators could not create total realism, accident studies do not show brake pedal behaviour and realistic experiments are unethical and dangerous.
This paper reviews what is known about driver braking behaviour together with accident studies. Experiments performed by Lucas are described in which pseudo-realistic accident situations are created and braking behaviour modelled.
