New Emergency Braking Systems

The goal of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is to support new technologies that increase safety to all drivers on the road and reduce the incidents of car accidents.
Anthony Foxx, Transportation Secretary, recently announced that two revolutionary emergency braking systems will be included in the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP.) According to the NHTSA, these types of advanced safety features have been responsible for saving over 600,000 lives over the past 50 years. The NHTSA will continue to encourage innovators to adopt new technologies to promote car safety.

The two emergency braking systems that are going to be introduced are crash imminent braking (CIB) and dynamic braking support (DBS.) According to police reports from 2013, one-third of all car accidents involved a rear end collision. Investigations showed that drivers either never applied their brakes, or failed to apply the brakes sufficiently, preceding the rear end car accident.

The expectation of the Automatic Emergency Braking Systems (AEB) is to intervene by spontaneously applying the vehicle’s brakes, or assisting the driver while braking, to help avoid a car accident or decrease the magnitude of an accident. AEB, new technology such as vehicle-to-vehicle communications (V2V) and automated vehicle technologies are projected to prevent car crashes and save the lives of drivers.

NCAP provides consumers with a checklist of safety features on cars in order for them to make comparisons across different car models. The three features that are highly suggested by NCAP for consumers to consider when purchasing a new car include forward collision warning, lane departure warning and rearview video systems. AEB systems will now be added to the list of important considerations for new car buyers.