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NHTSA delays AEB rule effective date, grants petitions for reconsideration

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has delayed the effective date of its automatic emergency braking (AEB) rule to give the Trump administration more time to review the mandate, according to a document released by NHTSA Friday

According to the document, the rule’s effective date of Jan. 27 has been pushed to March 20. 

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation (Auto Innovators) has filed suit against NHTSA saying the rule isn’t technologically feasible. 

NHTSA’s Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard, FMVSS 127 will require AEB and pedestrian AEB to come standard by September 2029 on all passenger cars and light trucks weighing up to 10,000 pounds.

By then, AEB must stop and avoid rear-end crashes at up to 62 miles per hour and detect pedestrians in daylight and at night.

The standard will require AEB to engage at up to 90 mph when a collision with a lead vehicle is imminent, and up to 45 mph when a pedestrian is detected.

In a June 2024 letter to Congress, John Bozzella, Auto Innovators president and CEO, wrote NHTSA’s new standard is “practically impossible with available technology” and that “NHTSA’s own data shows only one tested vehicle met the stopping distance requirements in the final rule.”

“We recommended NHTSA adopt a standard already in place in Europe that detects a potential forward collision, provides a driver warning and automatically engages the braking system to avoid a collision — or mitigate its severity — through the use of existing crashworthiness systems designed to better protect road users,” Bozzella wrote.

“Automakers and suppliers provided NHTSA [with] a series of technical adjustments during the comment period to correct the deficiencies and achieve our shared safety goals. Despite partnering with automakers on AEB in 2016, this time the agency rejected the industry’s feedback. …after a decade of shared and substantive work on AEB and a billion dollars invested, NHTSA inexplicably changed course and issued a rule that automakers indicated was not feasible with widely used braking technologies.”

A timeline of the rule implementation and Auto Innovators’ actions regarding it was provided in a previous release:

  • May 31, 2023 — NHTSA proposed AEB rulemaking for new vehicles.
  • Aug. 14, 2023 — Auto Innovators submitted comments to NHTSA on its AEB proposal.
  • April 29, 2024 — NHTSA finalized its AEB rule with a no-contact requirement.
  • June 24, 2024 — Auto Innovators filed a petition with NHTSA asking it to reconsider the April 29, 2024 rule citing the “impracticability” of NHTSA’s no-contact requirement “including the likelihood that this requirement will lead to unsafe unintended consequences…”
  • Nov. 12, 2024 — In a post-election letter to President-elect Donald Trump, Auto Innovators wrote that the 2024 AEB rule is “inconsistent with regulations implemented in other parts of the world and urges the incoming administration to ‘re-open the AEB rule…’”

Nov. 25, 2024 — NHTSA “effectively denied” the association’s June 24, 2024 petition for reconsideration and the no-contact requirement.

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Featured illustration credit: Chesky_W/iStock

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