Need More Evidence Auto Emergency Braking Saves Lives? Here Ya Go

We already know that automatic emergency braking systems save lives by preventing or mitigating crashes, and a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety confirms it. IIHS determined that GM vehicles with auto brake and forward collision warning logged 43 percent fewer police-reported front-to-rear crashes of all severities and 64 percent fewer front-to-rear crashes with injuries than the same vehicles without the technology.

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The study involved model-year 2013-15 Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC vehicles. GM provided the vehicle identification numbers for those with and without front crash prevention systems. Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president for research and author of the study, then obtained crash information from 23 states on police-reported accidents involving those VINs.

The bad news is that the system is optional on most GM vehicles, though many automakers are standardizing this safety feature. Twenty automakers representing more than 99 percent of the U.S. auto market have agreed to make automatic emergency braking standard on virtually all new passenger vehicles by September 2022, IIHS says. Some, like Toyota and Subaru, are already making good on this promise.

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“The evidence has been mounting that front crash prevention works, and it works even better when it doesn’t solely rely on a response from the driver,” Cicchino said in a statement.

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