Over the past couple of decades, vehicle safety technology has advanced substantially, with automakers introducing various features, such as seatbelts and airbags, that have helped make roads far safer and save hundreds of thousands of lives. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has acknowledged that progress has been made by adding the latest safety features developed by automakers to its list of recommended safety technologies. Now, the NHTSA is looking to expand that list, adding two features that aim to prevent rear-end collisions.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has announced that the NHTSA will add two automatic emergency braking system to the recommended safety tech list, in a bid to reduce the number of rear-end collisions. The two systems to be added to this list include the Dynamic Brake Support (DBS) and the Crash-Imminent Braking (CIB) systems.
The DBS system employs radars to monitor a car’s surroundings and detect an imminent crash, and applies maximum braking pressure to bring the car to a complete halt, after a driver has already started pushing the brake pedal down. CIB, on the other hand, uses sensors to detect when a collision is about to happen, and automatically applies the brakes to prevent an accident, without waiting for the driver to start slowing the car down.
These systems do a pretty good job of preventing rear-end crashes, which in most cases are caused by driver distraction or aggressive driving. The NHTSA says that one-third of all car crashes in 2013 involved a rear-end collision. That’s why the agency believes that these automatic emergency braking systems can help improve road safety and save many lives, especially it they are combined with vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology.
According to the NHTSA, the introduction of various safety features in vehicles have saved 613,501 lives since 1960, an estimation based on a statistical model created using data from the Fatal Accident Reporting System created by the agency.
“Today marks an enormous leap in the evolution of auto safety by encouraging adoption of new technologies to keep drivers and their passengers safe on our roads,” said U.S. Transportation secretary Anthony Foxx. “I want this department, the entire automotive industry, and other innovators to keep raising the bar on safety like we are doing now.”
The addition of these automatic braking features to NHTSA’s recommended safety tech list does not make them a mandatory feature in all new vehicles, but the agency said that it will note on its website whether a given vehicle has such features or not. The DBS and the CIB systems will be included in the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP).
Although many automakers include these features on their vehicles, they are usually limited to high-end, luxury brands, and are not available on economy cars. But the NHTSA hopes that the fact that the DBS and the CIB systems will be on the recommended safety tech list will encourage consumers to ask for those features when shopping for their next new car.