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."

Comments

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[flipper9]

You mean that automakers are allowing the police to stop people's vehicles at any time for any reason, remotely.

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[knightghost]

That's a next step, but this one is just another way to interfere with a driver. My traction control system tries to murder me at least twice every winter.

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[rtb61]

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.

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[alexhs]

You mean that automakers are allowing the police to stop people's vehicles at any time for any reason, remotely.

That technology already exists. It's usually called a police roadblock.

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[ShanghaiBill]

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.

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[SydShamino]

This safety feature mostly helps the person being hit, not the one doing the hitting.

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[FranTaylor]

Very few of the rear end collisions that this type of system protects against have fatalities.

Whiplash injuries are really horrible, the damage is permanent and painful forever. They happen even in low speed collisions. You've completely neglected the fact that whiplash injuries will be greatly reduced.

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[Jeremi]

i think people should be able to decide for themselves how much safety equipment they want to have

That would be fine if the only people who suffered were the people who made the bad decisions. In this case, however, it's not only the inattentive-and-cheap car owner who suffers, but also whatever (or whomever) he runs into.

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[icebike]

You mean that automakers are allowing the police to stop people's vehicles at any time for any reason, remotely.

Oh come off it.

This technology is already in lots and lots of cars, its being advertised heavily by at least a half dozen car companies, from Subaru all the way up to Mercedes.
When have you ever seen police stop anybody electronically?

The technology has been proven for years in options packages or standard equipment on higher priced cars, and these days on mid priced cars.
I've had it since 2012, and it has never once false alarmed and applied brakes inappropriately. It can detect and warn me of slower traffic AHEAD of the car in front of me, even when the car ahead has not yet realized it is approaching a crash.

I'm embarrassed to admit It has braked the car at least a couple times for me when I was distracted.

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[icebike]

Even if you lock them up hard (which is easy to do when on glare ice) the traction control system still detects that the wheels have stopped.
Some systems used initertial sensors, but it was found that drivers will steer during a skid, and this fact can be used by the computer that it is in a 4 wheel skid.

Modern electronic stability control systems are an evolution of the ABS concept. Here, a minimum of two additional sensors are added to help the system work: these are a steering wheel angle sensor, and a gyroscopic sensor. The theory of operation is simple: when the gyroscopic sensor detects that the direction taken by the car does not coincide with what the steering wheel sensor reports, the ESC software will brake the necessary individual wheel(s) (up to three with the most sophisticated systems), so that the vehicle goes the way the driver intends.

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[dunkelfalke]

The thing is, you are assuming that the car that is turning won't be there anymore. This is not given. The car might abort the turn for some reason, it might stall, it might take longer than you expect. Better to slow down.

Glad to have it

[crow]

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.

Re: Glad to have it

[FranTaylor]

People become more reliant on it and could end up paying even less attention rather than pay fucking attention to the car in front of them.

the whole point here is that humans are really poor drivers, they kill tens of thousands every year. expecting them do to better is really just folly. they need help.

Re: Glad to have it

[Kjella]

The same argument has been made about ABS, traction control, electronic stability programs and similar changes that mitigate or hide the forces at work until they overwhelm the system or that take away part of the work like cruise control and so on. At least so far the conclusion has been that even though people push the limits, overall it does good. Particularly if they limit the scope to hard/emergency braking or even just damage reduction, so you normally want to brake yourself. I mean, clearly if you do the math of distance and speed you at some point cross the threshold where a crash is inevitable, but there's still time to turn a high-speed impact into a low-speed impact. And that matters a lot, it's still an accident but they're not all equal.

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[FranTaylor]

bullshit, no way I'm letting the car brake for me.

if you have ABS, the car is already deciding when you can brake and when you can't.

if you have an automatic transmission, the "gas" pedal is merely a "suggestion" to the system that actually controls the throttle.

if you are driving on public roadways you have already agreed to follow whatever regulations the government has decided to impose on you

List of "major automakers"

[crow]

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.

Here's an Idea...

[Irate Engineer]

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.

Try non ABS

[dlenmn]

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.)