Five years ago, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration brokered a deal with nearly every major automaker in the US. They all voluntarily agreed to outfit 95% of the cars they sell with automatic emergency braking technology to further reduce avoidable accidents by 2023. In this year’s report, there are now 10 automakers that exceed the voluntary target.
The IIHS said on Thursday BMW, Hyundai, Mazda, Subaru, Toyota and Volkswagen joined Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Tesla to equip nearly every car they sell with AEB — perhaps the most helpful of today’s driver assist and active safety technology. The latter bunch met the agreement last year, but the insurance industry-funded group praised the latest six automakers for their progress.
Specifically, you’ll find AEB on almost every vehicle from the automakers that weigh under 8,500 pounds. Larger vehicles fall into a separate agreement. As for other companies that are part of the agreement, there are winners and losers. The IIHS noted Ford, Honda and Nissan are coming very close to meeting the target. Ford was most improved from 2019, actually, with 91% of its vehicles under the weight criteria equipped with AEB. In the losers column are Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Maserati and Mitsubishi.
The group specifically called out FCA for “lagging far behind” in the voluntary agreement. Each of the latter group of automakers, however, equipped fewer than half of cars sold with AEB — at least a 45% deficit from the agreement’s standard.
By the group’s estimate, if every automaker does meet the timeframe, the cars equipped with the technology will prevent 42,000 crashes and 20,000 injuries by 2025, hence the push for automakers like FCA, GM, JLR and others to speed up the process. Perhaps the most crucial data point is this: AEB reduces the number of rear-end crashes by a whopping 50%.
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