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What happens when you trigger a car’s automated emergency stopping?

Experiencing the sequence of events in a car programmed for automated emergency stopping.

The famous asleep-at-the-wheel film scene in National Lampoon's Vacation, where Clark Griswold goes off to slumberland for 72 seconds while piloting the Wagon Queen Family Truckster (a paragon of automotive virtue but lacking any advanced driver safety systems), might be a comical look at this prospect. Early in 2023, the Automobile Association of America's Foundation for Traffic Safety published a study estimating that 16–21 percent of all fatal vehicle crashes reported to police involve drowsy driving. It's a lengthy programming exercise that can take control of a vehicle in a simplified way, but not before three forms of human stimuli are triggered to wake up a drowsy driver: sight, sound, and a physical prompt.

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