Forty countries back UN draft regulation on braking systems

The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) on Tuesday announced that 40 countries — including The European Union and Japan — agreed on a draft UN regulation regarding advanced emergency braking systems (AEBS) for light commercial vehicles and new cars from 2020.

The new regulation imposes strict requirements for automatic braking for speeds up to 60 km per hour (about 37.3 miles per hour) focused on urban driving.

“It activates the brake to stop a crash and that’s it … It will not drive, it will brake,” said UNECE spokesman Jean Rodriguez. However, as of now, these regulations would not affect older vehicles.

The EU and Japan hinted at making the new AEBS regulations mandatory — this would impact 4 million new cars in Japan and another 15 million in Europe each year.

According to the UNECE report, 9,500 fatalities were recorded in 2016 due to car crashes in EU cities. About 40% of them were pedestrians.

However, the United States, China and India have not been part of the original agreement of 1958 on which the new regulation builds. Given that these nations have major domestic carmakers, many hope they agree to the new terms.

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