Automatic breaking may one day be required for new cars

Many new cars come with automatic braking as an option, but for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), this isn’t enough.

According to a report in The Detroit News, the NTSB is pressuring the U.S. Government to make automatic braking a federal mandate. Its argument is safety features like airbags and seat belts come standard, so more advanced safety like collision warning and automatic braking — which, they argue, can prevent injuries and fatalities— should come standard as well.

Collision warning systems use various combinations of radars, cameras and proximity sensors to warn a driver if they are too close to an object, with auto-braking taking it a step further by actually bringing the car to a stop if necessary. Generally, these features are available on high-end cars, though, they’re trickling down to the mainstream on models from Subaru, Chrysler and others.

In the European Union, cars must come equipped with these safety features in order to receive the highest crash test scores–- something the NTSB wants incorporated in U.S. crash testing. For this to happen, the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) would need to develop standards to test the performance of these active safety systems.

The NTSB wants NHTSA to mandate collision warnings first, with automatic braking mandated once clear standards are in place.

Automakers are opposed to the mandating of these active safety systems because they feel like the addition of these systems should be the consumers choice. In addition, automakers claim the inclusion of active safety systems would increase the cost.

It should also be noted that automakers generally make most of their profits on charging extra for options and packages consumers want. This is why a company like Porsche, which has notoriously expensive options for its cars, made $23,000 on average for every car they sold in 2013.

This is a tricky debate because on one hand a reduction in collisions is inarguably a good thing, but on the other hand maybe humans need to be more proactive in preventing them. Perhaps a combination of better driver training in America and wider availability of active safety is the answer.