North Carolina motorists may be interested to learn that nearly all vehicles that are sold in the U.S. will soon come standard with automatic emergency braking systems. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced that it had convinced several major automakers to install the emergency braking technology on all of their light vehicles by September 2022.
According to the NHTSA, automatic emergency braking systems could prevent and lessen the severity of thousands of car accidents every year. When a driver does not apply the brakes or fails to apply an appropriate level of braking power, an automatic emergency braking system can make the car brake automatically and help to prevent a crash. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety claims that the technology could prevent 20 percent of all car accidents.
Every year, there are about 5 million car accidents in the United States. If the safety claims about automatic emergency braking systems are correct, the safety technology could reduce the number of annual car accidents by about 1 million. In particular, the number of rear-end collisions may be greatly reduced if the new safety technology is implemented because most rear-end accidents are due to driver inattention.
While many rear-end collisions end up only causing slight property damage, some are quite serious and result in catastrophic injuries to occupants in the car that is struck. If it can be demonstrated that the car crash was due to the negligence of the driver in the car in the rear, then injured victims could find it advisable to have a lawyer’s help in seeking compensation for medical expenses and other losses.