New Safety Mandates to Prevent Crashes
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) has finalized a new rule mandating that all new light passenger vehicles and pickup trucks sold in the United States incorporate specific technology-based safety features by September 2029. This ruling requires the implementation of three key technologies: forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and pedestrian automatic emergency braking.
Toyota Motor demonstrating its “pre-collision system” which uses automatic steering in addition to automatic braking to prevent collisions, in Tokyo.
In a statement, the NHTSA anticipates that this new Federal Safety Standard Ruling will significantly reduce rear-end and pedestrian crashes. The agency projects that the ruling will save at least 360 lives per year and prevent approximately 24,000 injuries annually.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg stated, “The new vehicle safety standards we finalized today will save hundreds of lives and prevent tens of thousands of injuries every year. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is not only making historic investments in transportation, it’s also ushering in a new era of safer travel by ensuring new cars and light trucks are equipped with automatic emergency braking, making our roads safer for drivers and pedestrians alike.”
The ruling mandates that automakers integrate these features, ensuring they function effectively in challenging real-world conditions. This includes the ability to stop cars at speeds up to 62 miles per hour to avoid collisions with other vehicles. Additionally, the systems must be able to detect pedestrians in a car’s path during both daytime and nighttime conditions. The agency also requires that these systems be capable of applying the brakes at speeds up to 90 miles per hour when detecting an imminent collision with another vehicle and up to 45 miles per hour when detecting imminent collisions with pedestrians.
Testing Reveals Technological Shortcomings
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg
While the new safety standards are a positive development, recent tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) suggest that automakers still have work to do before the rule is fully implemented in September 2029. The IIHS’s tests have revealed that the effectiveness of safety suites varies significantly among different automakers.
In a recent evaluation of ten popular small SUVs from brands like Chevrolet, Mazda, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, Jeep, Hyundai, Ford, Subaru, and Mitsubishi, the IIHS assessed the vehicles’ collision warning alerts and automatic emergency braking systems. These tests determined how effectively the systems performed at ‘normal’ traffic speeds of 31, 37, and 43 miles per hour. The assessment results demonstrated a range of performance levels.
Only one vehicle, the Subaru Forester, received the highest mark in the tests. The Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 earned the IIHS’s second-highest rating of “acceptable,” while the Hyundai Tucson, Ford Escape, and Jeep Compass were rated “marginal.” Four vehicles—the Chevrolet Equinox, Mazda CX-5, Mitsubishi Outlander, and Volkswagen Taos—received the lowest grade, “poor.”
Nissan’s blind spot detection system warns that a vehicle is in the driver’s blind spot with a visual alert on the dashboard display.
Joe Young, the IIHS Media Relations director, commented in a statement to TheStreet, “Automatic emergency braking is already preventing a lot of crashes, and requiring that it work at higher speeds and with pedestrians, especially in the dark, will ensure that more crashes are prevented and more lives are saved. That said, the compliance timeline for the rule is longer than we’d like to see and underscores the importance of the consumer ratings tests that IIHS runs in encouraging better technology today. As our new test program demonstrates, automakers have some work to do when it comes to improving AEB systems to work at higher speeds.
Young continued, “We’re confident, however, that automakers will respond to IIHS testing and that we’ll see significant improvements in AEB well ahead of the 2029 compliance date, including in scenarios not covered by the new rule, like situations involving stopped motorcycles.”
