Toyota announced on Friday that it will be integrating high-tech crash avoidance systems for all its vehicles in 2017.
The announcement was made during the safety conference held at Ypsilanti, Mich. However, the Japanese car manufacturer failed to expand on the kind of gears that will be included in its high-tech pre-collision safety package such as automatic braking. Automatic braking is a crash prevention feature considered to be more efficient than crash warnings. Early tests showed that it reduces front and rear damages by at least 14 percent.
Russ Rader, spokesman for Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), explained that without the auto-brake feature, Toyota's safety pledge might not be as unique as previously thought.
"Forward collision warning systems, without auto-brake, are pretty common as options on many mainstream vehicles now. Automatic braking systems aren't as common on mainstream cars yet," Rader told the USA Today.
Toyota Motor Sales' general manager Bill Fay stated that the company is committed to improving the safety features of their cars. Toyota will include the auto-brake systems in their 2015 models.
In general, most car manufacturers do not consider automatic braking as a fool-proof preventive technique for crashing. The feature is included in the safety packages, along with early warning devices and a barking system informing the driver to stop the vehicle to avoid an impending crash. Rader thinks that companies are using automatic braking as an additional selling point in marketing their vehicles.
Tech Times reported that while other companies are investing on the development of self-driving cars, Toyota executives believe that the technology may not be ready to meet the demands. Instead, the company chose to focus instead on automated technology such as radars, sensors, and cameras to survey the driver's surroundings.
"At this point, it is difficult to realize driverless car safely," said Ken Koibuchi, head of Toyota's intelligent vehicle division. "To realize driverless car at this moment, we need a very rich infrastructure."
