NTSB wants collision avoidance standard on all vehicles
The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended that collision avoidance systems become standard on all new vehicles.
You donêt pay extra for your seatbelt, said NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart. And you shouldnêt have to pay extra for technology that can help prevent a collision altogether.
Rear-end crashes kill about 1,700 people every year and injure half a million more, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). More than 80 percent of these deaths and injuries might have been mitigated had the vehicles been equipped with a collision avoidance system, said the NTSB.
Although the NTSB has recommended the advanced safety systems 12 times in the past 20 years, progress has been limited. The NTSB report says a lack of incentives and limited public awareness has stunted the wide adoption of the systems.
Only 4 out of 684 passenger vehicle models in 2014 include a complete forward collision avoidance system as a standard feature.
The NTSB also recommends that NHTSA develop tests and standards to rate the performance of each vehicleês collision avoidance systems and incorporate those results into an expanded NCAP 5-star safety rating scale. Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in both houses of Congress that would have NHTSA do just that.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers told the Detroit News that consumers, not the government, should make decisions about how they want to spend their money on safety systems.
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