The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed that all new passenger vehicles should come equipped with automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems. The agency aims to have universal implementation of AEB by the end of the decade, but this would come with a few complications as AEB doesn’t qualify as a passive system. AEB effectively has the car assessing a situation and deciding when to apply the brakes without any input from the driver. Testing has shown that these systems can be faulty, and they are not very effective at avoiding accidents involving pedestrians or at higher operating speeds. The NHTSA has acknowledged these issues and stated that significant progress is needed to advance pedestrian automatic emergency braking rulemaking.
Mandating AEB would increase the cost of modern vehicles, but most vehicles produced today already have these systems, and additional tech requirements being mandated in Europe have already encouraged manufacturers to implement them in North America. The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) have been pressuring the industry to implement AEB for years without any formal legislation coming into effect. Many of the largest automakers already include automatic braking as standard equipment.
The NHTSA alleges that mandating AEB would save at least 360 lives a year and reduce injuries by at least 24,000 annually. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated, “Just as lifesaving innovations from previous generations like seat belts and air bags have helped improve safety, requiring automatic emergency braking on cars and trucks would keep all of us safer on our roads.”
The proposed rule is a key component of the Department’s National Roadway Safety Strategy, which was launched in January 2022 to address the national crisis in traffic fatalities and serious injuries. The NRSS adopts the safe system approach and builds multiple layers of protection with safer roads, safer people, safer vehicles, safer speeds, and better post-crash care. As part of the safe system approach, this rule highlights safer vehicles and USDOT’s effort to expand vehicle systems and features that help to prevent crashes.
The NHTSA’s vision for automatic emergency braking systems would require some amount of standardization and benchmarks to be set. The agency has a few targets it would like to see reached, including requiring all cars to be able to stop and avoid contact with a vehicle in front of them up to 62 miles per hour and requiring pedestrian AEB, including recognizing and avoiding pedestrians at night.
The DOT will be focusing on having the NHTSA conduct an assessment of what’s actually feasible in anticipation of formal requirements. All new vehicles will be mandated to have AEB technology three years after the publication of a final rule, with exceptions being made for commercial vehicles and anything with a gross vehicle weight rating in excess of 10,000 pounds.
While AEB is seen as a major safety advancement, it sets a precedent for government regulators to require all manner of other devices that effectively wrangle control away from the driver. A better solution would be to create dedicated bike and walking paths separate from the spaces cars occupy, but this is easier said than done in particularly dense urban environments.
Incorporating AEB into vehicles would save lives and reduce injuries, but there are still issues that need to be addressed, such as standardization and benchmarks. The DOT and NHTSA are working towards implementing AEB technology in all new vehicles, but it remains to be seen how effective it will be in preventing accidents involving pedestrians and at higher operating speeds.
