Ford Motor Company and Honda have met a commitment ahead of schedule to equip most of their vehicles with automatic emergency braking this year, significantly reducing crash and injury risk for thousands of drivers, according to a news release from Consumer Reports and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Friday.
Ford and its luxury brand Lincoln, along with Honda and its luxury brand Acura, installed the safety feature on more than 95% of the vehicles they produced for the U.S. market between Sept. 1, 2020 and Aug. 31, 2021.
Insurance data shows that front crash prevention systems with both forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking cut rear-end crashes by half.
The effort to nail down a compliance deadline was led by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit group funded by insurance companies that educates the public on safety features that can save lives and may impact insurance rates.
Ford and Honda joined 10 others who fulfilled the voluntary commitment in previous years: Audi, BMW, Hyundai/Genesis, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota/Lexus, Volkswagen and Volvo, the release said.
Meanwhile, General Motors and Stellantis are among a handful of automakers that need to make big strides in 2022 to keep their vow to meet the timeline.
This latest update provides a status check on the 20 carmakers who said they would make the crash avoidance technology standard equipment on nearly all new cars by Sept. 1, 2022.
Stellantis below 50%
“We do want to give Stellantis credit where it’s due,” Joe Young, spokesperson for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, told the Free Press.
The Auburn Hills-based automaker did make “big progress” over the past year, increasing the percent of new vehicles produced with automatic emergency braking to 43% from 14% last year, he said.
“However, Stellantis is still the only automaker below the 50% mark, which means they’ll have to keep up a steady pace to meet next year’s goal,” he said.
“Stellantis isn’t alone in having some work to do. General Motors needs to pick up the pace as well, having equipped only 58% of new vehicles with the technology in the last year,” Young said. “GM’s improvement this year wasn’t a huge jump, so they’ll need to accelerate the pace in 2022.”
Both GM and Stellantis were spotlighted for their slow pace in adopting the technology that’s proven to prevent crashes and injury.
Eric Mayne, spokesperson for Stellantis, told the Free Press Friday, “We will comply with the agreement as outlined.”
And GM spokesperson Stuart Fowle said, “GM remains on track to meet the industry commitment to automatic emergency braking and has been a volume leader in getting more vehicles equipped with this technology on public roads.”
The companies submit progress reports annually until they meet the target to include the feature on at least 95% of their light-duty cars and trucks. Light-duty vehicles are those with a gross vehicle weight rating of 8,500 pounds or fewer.
“General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Porsche and Stellantis — the company created by the recent merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot — will need big gains to meet the 2022-23 target for light-duty vehicles,” the news release said. “In the past year, they equipped fewer than two-thirds of the units they produced with (automatic emergency braking) systems that meet the performance requirements of the voluntary commitment. Along with Mitsubishi, two of those companies, Jaguar Land Rover and Stellantis, are among the three that made the most progress in 2021.”
Automakers must confirm that the automatic emergency braking system slows the vehicle’s city speed by at least 10 mph in either the 12 or 25 mph test or 5 mph in both of the tests, the release said.
‘Lagging automakers’
“The final sprint these lagging automakers are making shows that a rapid rollout of advanced safety features is possible,” David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said in a news release. “With the Ford and Honda brands hitting the target, this essential safety feature is now on a huge number of affordable, top-selling vehicles.”
The voluntary commitment doesn’t specify phase-in milestones, the news release said.
To date: Nissan/Infiniti is at 93%. Mitsubishi is at 92%, up from 39%. Kia is now at 89%. Maserati is at 72%, up from 48%. Jaguar Land Rover is at 60%, up from 0%.
David Friedman, vice president of advocacy for Consumer Reports, cited Stellantis and GM and said consumers expect better.
He also said federal safety regulators should set standards to ensure the automatic emergency braking also works at highway speeds and stops for pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users both during the day and at night.
Ford heavy duty trucks
Meanwhile, the 20 automakers also committed to installing automatic emergency braking on vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of 8,501-10,000 pounds by September 2025.
Ford and Stellantis were among just six companies who already reported producing vehicles in that range for the U.S. market in 2021, the safety groups said. The news release noted that Ford equipped 75% of these vehicles with automatic emergency brakes, Stellantis 13% percent and Nissan/Infiniti 12%.
More:Ford Bronco didn’t get coveted crash safety awards: Where it fell short
More:UAW grows by 17,000 academic workers in California after threat to strike UC
More:Bill Ford could have sold automaker stock for $18M. He paid $20M to keep it instead.
Content in this story was edited after publishing.
Contact Phoebe Wall Howard at313-618-1034orphoward@freepress.com.Follow her on Twitter@phoebesaid. Read more on Ford and sign up for our autos newsletter.