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10 Major Automakers Agree To Include Automatic Emergency Braking On New Vehicles
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Department of Transportation, and Institute for Highway Safety announced today a landmark agreement from 10 of the world's biggest automakers to include automatic emergency braking on all new vehicles as a standard safety feature. The car manufacturers are: Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Mazda, Mercedes Benz, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. "Automatic emergency braking includes a range of systems designed to address the large number of crashes, especially rear-end crashes, in which drivers do not apply the brakes or fail to apply sufficient braking power to avoid or mitigate a crash. AEB systems use on-vehicle sensors such as radar, cameras or lasers to detect an imminent crash, warn the driver and, if the driver does not take sufficient action, engage the brakes."
I bought a new car this year, and it has it. I'm very glad to have it, even though it has triggered once or twice when there was nothing there due to a sensor glitch. The reason I have a new car is that I failed to brake in time to avoid an accident.
Yes, the technology isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than not having it.
As we get more of these features, it should result in fewer accidents and lower insurance rates.
My last 2 accidents came from being rear ended by jackoff distracted drivers. One of them was quite serious.
I like that all of the Big Three American automakers are included: Ford, GM, and Tesla.
The biggest names missing are Fiat/Chrysler, Honda, Hyundai, and Kia. I'm not surprised that the Koreans aren't included, as they are going for the bottom of the market where there's not as much padding for added costs.
Why don't we put some effort into human factors and get people to put their hands on the wheel and pay attention?
If you're going to get fancy and throw technology at the problem, how about spending some effort to force people to shut their fucking cell phones off while driving? There has to be a way that you can brick cell phones while it is in the vehicle. Get some people on this, find a way. I see idiots fumbling on their phone and drifting off the highway or across lanes of traffic all the time. Let's fix this, OK?
Automating car response like braking is not going to work well on a snowy day with slick roads. Might be dandy in sunny, dry California, but the rest of the world actually has weather and precipitation. Having cars slamming on the brakes randomly because the computer mistook a drift of snowflakes or blowing leaves for a car bumper is going to cause more accidents, not less.
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Actual use could also be problematic. I occasionally have to reverse down a steep exit from a driveway onto a road and that always sets off the parking sensors because the sensors react to the approaching pavement without detecting the vehicle current disposition, being on a steep driveway. Will that mean the car will brake and leave me permanently perched on that driveway.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You mean that automakers are allowing the police to stop people's vehicles at any time for any reason, remotely.
Even assuming that it isn't controllable remotely -- who is going to answer for accidents that happen when emergency break activate by accident?
the real issue is that the cost of cars is going to go up again.
But the cost of insurance will go down.
the truth is they will make more money per car sold, and raise the cost of entry level cars
Car manufacturing is an very competitive business. If they could just raise prices, and expect consumers to accept it, they would have already done so.
This is proven technology, that is already installed in millions of cars. In mass production, it will add little to the cost of new cars. The cost saved in avoided or less severe accidents will likely overwhelm the equipment cost.
Well, from a market cap perspective, the big three are Ford, GM and Telsa. Fiat-Chrysler was eclipsed by Telsa back in '13:
Ford - $54.4B
GM - $47.7B
Tesla - $32B
Fiat-Chrysler - $18.8B
Yes. And in that exact situation, non-ABS brakes would do exactly the same thing. And there are also situations where ABS activating is worse than if it didn't activate. Just like seatbelts and airbags will kill some people. But for the vast majority of cases where it does activate, it results in the driver having more control and being able to stop faster than if it did not activate.
Formula 1 didn't ban ABS brakes because they didn't work well. It was because they worked too well.
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Speaking as someone who lives in WI, USA and, until recently, drove a car _without_ antilock brakes, you're nuts if you think that ABS is doing more harm than good. It takes very little to lock non-antilock brakes on a sowy road. ABS aren't part of some conspiracy. They're life savers. (FWIW I speak as an defacto American automotive Luddite with my manual transmission.)