On May 17, 2022, in San Francisco, California, a pedestrian walked through Union Square carrying shopping bags.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
The Biden administration plans to require all new cars and trucks to be equipped with pedestrian collision avoidance systems, including automatic emergency braking technology, by the end of the decade.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview that the requirement is intended to reduce pedestrian fatalities, which have been rising in the post-Covid 19 era.
“So many Americans are dying on our roadways,” Buttigieg said. “We feel we do have a responsibility to make this technology the standard across the U.S. fleet.”
The new standards will require all cars to avoid contact at speeds under 62 mph and require them to be able to detect pedestrians in the dark. They are also required to brake at speeds of up to 45 mph when a pedestrian is detected.
The Department of Transportation estimates the rule will save 360 lives and prevent 24,000 injuries each year.
Automatic emergency braking “prevents collisions. Collisions kill people — it’s that simple,” Buttigieg said.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry trade group representing automakers, said in a statement that it had not yet seen the new regulations and could not comment directly.
The company said technologies such as autonomous emergency braking have proven to be “game-changing” and that carmakers have voluntarily committed to installing them in new vehicles.
According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, Drivers kill more than 7,500 pedestrians By 2022, it was the deadliest year since 1981 – with the total number of deaths roughly doubling in the past 10 years.
The pedestrian fatality rate, 2.2 deaths per billion vehicle miles, is also higher than pre-pandemic levels, although the number began to decline in the first half of 2023.
Research shows that speeding and other risky driving behavior has increased since the coronavirus pandemic, while public transport ridership has fallen, leading to an increase in road deaths.
Additionally, the pandemic has delayed sales of new cars, which tend to be safer and equipped with the latest accident prevention technology.
At the same time, more and more consumers are buying light trucks, including SUVs, but these trucks are often less safe.
JD Power survey data shows that consumers are proving somewhat resistant to the proposed required technology.
“Drivers reported a lot of issues where it shouldn’t be activated,” said Kathleen Rizk, senior director of user experience benchmarking and technology at JD Power. She said they also found it was too sensitive, or it reacted in ways they didn’t want. different.
“People think they’re losing control,” Rizk said, referring to the technological interventions built into modern passenger cars.
Buttigieg acknowledged that the technology is still being refined, which is one reason the requirement won’t go into effect until the end of 2029.
“It will take us several years to perfect this technology,” he said, adding that hiccups in some examples of security features may not help.
“We need to make sure these technologies are refined and developed,” he said.
Buttigieg estimated the requirement would add $82 to the cost of a new car, a price well worth the lives saved, he said.
“If there’s a technology that saves lives … we don’t want it to be available only to those who can afford it,” he said. “We want to make sure every car that comes off the line has that capability.”
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