Nissan And Honda Announce Effort to Improve Road Safety

 

Nissan and Honda separately released announcements of their effort to help improve road safety with new features added to their fleets.

Nissan announced its Automatic Emergency Braking feature will be made to be a standard feature on almost all of their 2018 model year cars – which should equal about one million new, safer vehicles on the road based on the Japanese automaker’s sales projections. AEB will be available on its most popular models regardless of trim level or features specified – excluded will be vehicles that utilize manual transmission.

About Automatic Emergency Braking

This technology uses radar to identify and detect a potential collision with a vehicle ahead and provides the driver with a warning if vehicle proximity is too close. If the driver doesn’t take sufficient evasive action, the system will apply the brakes to help avoid or reduce the severity of a collision. Expect the feature to be included on popular vehicle models like the Altima, Leaf, Maxima, Murano, Pathfinder, Rogue, Rogue Sport, and Sentra models.

Honda Updates Self Driving Vehicle Goals

Honda, also a well-known Japanese automaker, has committed to getting their Level 4 self-driving vehicles on the road by 2025. The news came during an announcement from Honda’s CEO, Takahiro Hachigo at a media event.

“We are striving to provide our customers with a sense of confidence and trust by offering automated driving that will keep vehicles away from any dangerous situation and that will not make people around the vehicle feel unsafe.” — Takahiro Hachigo Honda president and CEO.

 

About Self Driving Levels

Based on the SAE scale that is used to categorize self-driving vehicles, Level 5 designates vehicles designed to operate entirely without human interaction under all circumstances while Level 4 is used to demark vehicles that are capable of full autonomy but only in certain areas or specific routes of travel.
Previously, Honda announced efforts to have cars with Level 3 autonomy available by 2020. These semi-autonomous vehicles will be followed by fully-autonomous cars just five years later based on this latest announcement.

References
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/8/15761272/honda-self-driving-cars-autonomous-level-4-date
http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/channels/us-united-states-nissan/releases/nissan-to-offer-standard-automatic-emergency-braking-aeb-on-one-million-u-s-vehicles-in-2018-model-year
http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/emergency_brake.html