What happened
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is an independent nonprofit funded by auto insurers. Subaru offered EyeSight, a driver assistance system with automatic emergency braking, as an option on 2013 to 2020 models. IIHS writes that it works from two cameras behind the windshield. Its first two generations were designed to detect only bicycles traveling parallel to the car. Jessica Cicchino, the IIHS vice president of research, compared bicycle crash rates of Subarus with and without EyeSight in 16 US states from 2014 to 2020. She read the equipment from vehicle identification numbers and controlled for factors such as state, model year and driver age. The study vehicles were in 856 police-reported bicycle crashes, 283 of them parallel. Rates of parallel crashes were 29% lower with EyeSight (rate ratio 0.71, 95% confidence interval 0.53-0.96). Crossing crashes were 5% lower and all bicycle crashes 9% lower, but neither reduction was statistically significant. IIHS published the results on 6 June 2023, after a conference paper in April 2023. Cicchino cautions that the study gives no clear indication that EyeSight prevents fatal parallel crashes, which feature high speeds.
Sources
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Report, by authors with no tie to the system.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Subaru's bicyclist detection shows positive results. News release, 6 June 2023.
Rates of police-reported parallel crashes were 29 percent lower for vehicles equipped with EyeSight than for unequipped vehicles.
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Report, by authors with no tie to the system.
Cicchino, J. B. Effects of a bicyclist detection system on police-reported bicycle crashes. Proceedings of the 27th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV), April 2023. The author is the vice president of research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
EyeSight was associated with a statistically significant 29% reduction in parallel crash rates per insured vehicle year (Rate ratio [RR], 0.71; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.53-0.96, p = 0.03)
Details
AI system
- Workflow
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EyeSight worked from two cameras mounted behind the windshield. Its first two generations were designed to detect bicycles traveling parallel to the car. EyeSight was optional on 2013 to 2020 Subaru models, so the same models with and without it could be compared.
Follow-up
- Conditions for replication
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The cyclist travels parallel to the car, since these generations were not designed to detect crossing bicycles. The crash happens at the speeds that the study covered, since IIHS cautions that fatal parallel crashes feature high speeds.
Entry details
- Sector
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Road vehicle crash avoidance.
- Purpose
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Subaru built EyeSight to help drivers avoid crashes, with automatic emergency braking among its features. Its first two generations were designed to detect only bicycles traveling parallel to the car.
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Cite this record
Peter H. Vartanian. (2026). Subarus with EyeSight had 29% fewer parallel crashes with cyclists (AIBD-0975). Artificial Intelligence Benefits Database, edition of 1 November 2026. https://petervartanian.xyz/aibd/records/AIBD-0975.html (archived at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AADSII, version 7.0)