U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles

DETROIT — In the not-too-distant future, automatic emergency braking will have to come standard on all new passenger vehicles in the United States, a requirement that the government says will save hundreds of lives and prevent thousands of injuries every year.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration unveiled the final version of the new regulation on Monday and called it the most significant safety rule in the past two decades. It's designed to prevent many rear-end and pedestrian collisions and reduce the roughly 40,000 traffic deaths that happen each year.

“We’re living through a crisis in roadway deaths,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview. “So we need to do something about it.”

It's the U.S. government's first attempt to regulate automated driving functions and is likely to help curb some of the problems that have surfaced with driver-assist and fully automated driving systems.

Although about 90% of new vehicles have the automatic braking standard now under a voluntary agreement with automakers, at present there are no performance requirements, so some systems are may not be that effective. The new regulations set standards for vehicles to automatically stop and avoid hitting other vehicles or pedestrians, even at night.

“Part of how I think we’re going to turn the corner on the unacceptable level of roadway deaths that we just lived with for my entire lifetime is through these kinds of technologies,” said Buttigieg, who is 42. “We need to make sure we set high performance standards.”

The regulation, which will require additional engineering to bolster software and possibly add hardware such as radar, won't go into effect for more than five years. That will give automakers time to bolster their systems during the normal model update cycle, NHTSA said.

It also will drive up prices, which NHTSA estimates at $354 million per year in 2020 dollars, or $82 per vehicle. But Buttigieg said it will save 362 lives per year, prevent about 24,000 injuries and save billions in property damage.

Critics say the standards should have come sooner, and that they don’t appear to require that the systems spot people on bicycles, scooters or other