By 2022, all new cars will come with automatic emergency braking, a feature that could potentially prevent tens of thousands of crashes and injuries each year.
However, a new poll shows that while 40 percent of Americans want such a feature on their next car, they may have unrealistic expectations about what the brakes can do. Two-thirds of Americans believe that the braking systems are meant to avoid crashes without driver intervention, but that’s not always the goal, according to a new report from AAA.
Some auto-braking systems are designed to simply lessen crash severity, while others are designed to prevent crashes entirely. Even if a car doesn’t fully avoid a crash, slowing down the car will reduce the impact of the crash and potentially lessen the extent of injuries and damages.
Related: Carmakers to Announce Pact to Install Auto-braking Systems by 2022
The auto club tested five 2016 model-year vehicles that have the automatic emergency-braking system and found that systems designed to prevent crashes reduced the speed of vehicles by nearly double the amount of those designed to lessen the severity of a crash.
Among cars traveling at less than 30 miles per hour, systems designed to avoid crashes worked 60 percent of the time, and those designed to lessen severity avoided crashes 33 percent of the time.
At 45 miles per hour, braking systems designed to avoid a crash were able to reduce speed by 74 percent and avoid crashes in 40 percent of tests. Those designed to lessen crash severity were able to reduce speeds by just 9 percent.
Rear-end collisions account for nearly 2,000 deaths and more than 50,000 injuries each year.
