The Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI) is petitioning the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to take a step back and reconsider the Final Rule on Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) and Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking (PAEB), which would require new vehicles to be equipped with AEB and PAEB starting September 1, 2029.
John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, is also asking the congressional committees with oversight of the NHTSA to reevaluate the rule, saying that meeting the standards as they're written is "practically impossible with available technology." Bozzella writes, "NHTSA’s own data shows only one tested vehicle met the stopping distance requirements in the final rule."
Though the letters stress the industry's adoption of new safety technologies, both take issue with how those technologies will be regulated under the rule and how the organization's suggestions to lawmakers have been disregarded. According to the organization, there are five aspects of the Final Rule that it says make implementing the requirement objectionable. It also provided suggestions for remedying the issues it has with the rule.
The first issue, the AAI argues, is the rule's requirement for a braking vehicle to have "no contact" with the lead vehicle or pedestrian test mannequin at speeds of up to 62.1 mph, "as well as the lack of objective performance requirements for the equipment requirement" of the rule. The AAI suggests that the NHYSA reduce the maximum test speeds for these requirements, adjusting headway requirements, and introducing a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM) to come up with more objective requirements. The suggestion highlights the rule's unclear definitions of what it means to "operate" equipment and defining when a crash is "imminent."
The second concern is that the testing requirements for the rule are too strict, too many, and don't match up with existing procedures that allow for compliance to be determined over multiple test runs rather than a single run. The AAI suggests changing this to be more what it calls "similar to current NCAP procedures" by determining compliance through multiple test runs.
The AAI's third point disagrees with the requirements for the illumination of the malfunction indicator lamp "under all conditions under all conditions of malfunction, including sensor degradation, and under all possible conditions of 'adjustments in performance,'" as well as the requirement that AEB technology couldn't be manually deactivated even in situations where it would be dangerous to do so. The alliance recommends striking the requirement that the lamp indicates any and all possible modifications and malfunctions and instead providing a list of defined modifications and malfunctions that should cause the lamp to illuminate as well as an associated test procedure. It also asks that manual deactivation of AEB be allowed under certain conditions.
Fourth, the AAI says that the Final Rule lacks "an objective standard for the requirement to suppress the audio in a vehicle when the Forward Collision Warning (FCW) is presented," and that it also lacks the "objective criteria and a corresponding test procedure for evaluating compliance with that requirement." The alliance asks for the elimination of the audio suppression requirement entirely or the issuance of another SNPRM to define the thresholds, sources, and exemptions for audio suppression testing and compliance.
The fifth and final issue is the most direct: "The failure of the agency to consider adequately the costs of the new requirements, including the failure to consider the likely disbenefits that will be induced by the new standard, at least for the next decade." The AAI emphasizes the possible rise in rear-end collisions caused by the Final Rule's braking requirements and suggests the NHTSA revise its assessments related to the rule.
In his letter to Congress, Bozzella concludes that if the rule is implemented as is, it'll upset and confuse drivers, increase rear-end collisions, and increase costs for consumers.
