Automatic braking systems save lives. Now they’ll need to work at 62 MPH.

About 42,000 people die every year from automobile collisions in the United States. 100% of these deaths are unnecessary and 95%+ of them are realistically preventable in the near term. Traffic collisions are fundamentally caused by vehicles being big and driving fast in the wrong places.

• Reduce weight and you reduce deaths: two pedestrians colliding doesn't have the same risk profile as two cars because they don't have as much mass.
• Reduce speed and you reduce deaths: two vehicles moving at 0 mph physically cannot collide.
• Improve infrastructure to better guide cars safely and you further reduce deaths.

Combine reductions in weight and speed and additions of infrastructure and you can practically reduce traffic violence to Zero or Near-Zero levels. If we are going to assume that cars need to have some moderate amount of weight/mass (this is not a fact of life but a sociological assumption of how we move around), the best two solutions are reducing speed and improving the built environment.

There are three general ways to reduce speed, in order of theoretically greatest effectiveness to least effectiveness:

• Force drivers to reduce speed (hardware or software limitations on speed and acceleration)
• Scare drivers into reducing speed, usually economically, by risking damage to their vehicle if they go too fast, or by severely fining them for speed violations (automated speed enforcement, speed bumps, narrow lanes)
• Ask drivers nicely to reduce speed ("beep beep beep beep", posted speed limits, sporadic traffic cops)

No matter the reason someone may choose to drive dangerously, the fact that they are able to make that choice is an unnecessary opportunity for harm. We can stop people from making dangerous choices with infrastructure designs and technology in automobiles. By itself, beeping at them doesn't really do anything and probably just contributes to cognitive overload.

People pejoratively talk about the "nanny state" and opine about freedom and whatever. That's cool. You won't have that opinion when your sister is hit by a speeding driver and dies. We can totally stop all traffic deaths and reach Vision Zero.

A traffic safety advocate in my city has written a story about he and his entire family, including his young daughter, being hit by a car/truck and hospitalized. I have not met this person but his story is so perilous. The collision did not need to happen; it was totally avoidable; it is similar to virtually all pedestrian collisions in this country.

In addition to causing death and suffering, traffic violence costs this country $340 billion per year in medical costs, lost productivity, property damage, and other expenses. Even if you don't have a heart, it should be clear that there is no benefit to the status quo.

Auto-braking systems are an example of a technology solution that can reduce traffic violence. Mandating the implementation of this technology in all vehicles, and better versions of it, is a necessity. It must be done as soon as possible.

Auto-braking systems, called AEB for short, use sensors including cameras, radar, and lidar to sense when a crash is about to happen and warn drivers—then automatically apply the brakes if drivers don’t respond. It’s a handy thing to have in those vital few moments before your car careens into the back of another. One industry group estimates that US automakers' move to install AEB on most cars—something they did voluntarily, in cooperation with road safety advocates—will prevent 42,000 crashes and 20,000 injuries by 2025.

To me the useful part about this is that AEBs will apply the brakes whether or not the driver responds to the beeps. Drivers have less ability to drive dangerously. That's a good thing.

There has been some fuss lately about self-driving cars. We don't yet understand how they will affect our cities. But it is becoming empirically obvious that we benefit from minimizing the amount of time humans spend manually operate heavy machinery on our roadways. Humans are terrible at driving. I often advocate for infrastructure solutions, and we still need those, but by effectively removing the source of most crashes (human error/recklessness), we prevent most incidents to begin with.

And the technology is getting better.

A new report from AAA finds these emergency braking systems are getting even better—and challenges automakers to perfect them at even higher speeds.

AAA researchers tested three model year 2018 and 2017 vehicles versus three model year 2024 vehicles, and found the AEB systems in the newer cars were twice as likely as the old systems to avoid collisions at speeds up to 35 miles per hour. In fact, the new systems avoided all of the tested collisions at speeds between 12 and 35 mph. The majority of the newer cars avoided hitting a non-moving target at 45 mph, too.

Policy/regulation is really forcing better safety features. Automakers only do things voluntarily when there's a sense in the air that they'll be regulated either way, so they decided to get a little ahead of the curve. Now they're being pushed further.

Now new regulations will require AEB systems to get even more intelligent. Earlier this year, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which crafts the country’s road safety rules, announced that by 2029, it will require all cars to be able to stop and avoid contact with any vehicle in front of them at even faster speeds: 62 mph. The Feds will also require automakers to build AEB systems that can detect pedestrians in the daytime and at night. And automakers will have to build tech that applies brakes automatically at speeds up to 45 mph when it senses an imminent collision with a person, and 90 mph when it senses one with a car.

The rule will require automakers to build systems that can operate at highway speeds. As a result, it should do more good; according to the NHTSA, if manufacturers deploy auto-braking systems that work at higher speeds, it would save at least 360 lives each year and prevent 24,000 injuries.

The new rules make it so drivers can’t turn [AEBs] off.

I don't think it should be physically possible to drive at 90 mph due to inherent safety concerns, but this is a good first step.

About 7500 pedestrians are killed per year in the US. Saving 360 lives is great. It's also a drop in the bucket. This tech needs to get way better. We also need to continue minimizing the use of automobiles in dense urban areas because as long as humans are able to pilot oversized vehicles around Vulnerable Road Users (which, even with self-driving cars, will remain a reality), they will cause death.

Of course the auto industry complains about regulation.

The government estimated that installing more advanced AEB systems on its cars would cost an additional $350 per vehicle. The auto lobbying group estimates prices could range up to $4,200 per car instead, and it has filed a petition to request changes to the final federal rules.

I think this disparity is telling. Of course the companies who make profits off of selling cheap and dangerous vehicles will massively inflate their data points and try to stop regulators from making things safer for everyone.

The hard truth is that if cars can't be made safely, we simply shouldn't be driving as many cars. "The economy noooo": please see previous $340 billion/yr figure. There are lots of ways to transport people far more safely and efficiently than using automobiles. The US formerly had an incredibly robust streetcar and inter-city rail/bus system, but intentionally tore up that infrastructure for the sake of private automobile use. There is no way this software will inflate automobile costs by $4000+. I would believe $350, but that's worth it for society. (For the lifetime of a car, that's $35/year; the collective costs of traffic deaths in that period are ~$3.4 trillion.) Regardless, the cost of technology like this will continue to drop as it matures.

Long-term, most of the technological problems leading to possible cost increases described in this article would be resolved if automobiles were physically restricted via software from driving at high speeds. You don't have to develop complicate hydraulic brake upgrades to stop more quickly at high speeds if cars are physically prevented from driving at high speeds to begin with. You don't need ultra-advanced LIDAR to see really far ahead if the car isn't traveling extremely fast. For the record, I think all of the changes required by the 2029 regulation are worth it. I don't necessarily have a problem with cars driving at 65 mph on highways, but beyond that, for the future, we can bypass the law of diminishing returns by capping the amount of work the complex tech needs to do using simpler overarching limits.