While many people still have reservations about fully autonomous vehicles and the technology doesn’t seem to be quite ready for mass adoption, advanced driving assistants and safety features have already reached mass adoption. Features like electronic stability control, automatic emergency braking or lane keeping assistants are standard in modern vehicles, improving driver safety around the world.
As technology advances, these safety features are rapidly improving as well. According to a study conducted by the American Automobile Association (AAA), automatic emergency braking has gotten significantly better at preventing collision in a matter of a few years. The study, which compared three popular cars from 2017/2018 to similar models from 2024, found that the AEB systems in 2024 models avoided forward collisions with a standing target without fail at speeds of 12, 25 and 35 miles per hour. Meanwhile cars from 2017/18 only avoided impact in 73, 47 and 33 percent of all test runs, respectively.
Despite these advancements, there’s still a lot of room for improvement, AAA notes, as AEB systems are not yet reliant at higher speeds. When testing the 2024 cars at speeds of 45 miles per hour, the cars only avoided collision in 10 out of 15 cases. At 55 miles per hour, no vehicle successfully avoided collision. These findings highlight the importance of continued improvements. A NHTSA rule released earlier this year requires new vehicles to avoid a forward collision at speeds of up to 62 miles per hour by 2029.
