Nissan is the latest automaker to make standard on a number of its vehicles what advocates consider to be the next important safety feature.
Many of Nissan’s most popular US vehicles will get automatic emergency braking as standard for 2018, the company announced Thursday. The Rogue, Rogue Sport, Altima, Sentra, Maxima, Leaf, Murano and Pathfinder will get the feature that was previously optional or part of an option package on certain trim levels. This only excludes versions of these cars with manual transmissions and the Sentra NISMO. In all, about 1 million vehicles that Nissan sells annually in the US will be equipped with the feature, according to the company, up from about 450,000 in 2017.
“The big news here is that we’re making AEB standard across all grades of our best-selling models,” said Michael Bunce, vice president of product planning for Nissan North America said in the release. “This increased AEB availability is part of our ongoing commitment to help reduce fatalities while realizing our comprehensive vision of Nissan Intelligent Mobility.”
Pretty much every automaker has pledged to put automatic emergency braking, or forward emergency braking, on every vehicle by 2022 through a pact with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, as the agency considers the technology to considerably reduce crashes and injuries as it automatically applies brakes in the event of an impending collision.
Volvo has it on all of its current US models, while Toyota made it standard on a slew of popular 2017 models such as the Corolla. And a number of automakers are making automatic emergency braking standard on its most popular configurations.
Considering the Nissan Rogue has been one of the best-selling vehicles in the US that isn’t a pickup truck, Nissan is taking a pretty bold step as automatic emergency braking goes mainstream.
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