The nation’s largest automotive lobby said Friday it’s suing the Biden administration over a new automatic emergency braking rule adopted last year.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents all major U.S. automakers except for Tesla Inc., filed the petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit against the U.S. Transportation Department. It takes issue with a standard in the rules that requires all new cars by 2029 be able to stop and avoid contact with a vehicle in front of them at up to 62 miles per hour. Auto Innovators CEO John Bozzella last year called the requirement “practically impossible.”
“This litigation by Alliance for Automotive Innovation should not be interpreted as opposition to AEB, a lack of confidence in the technology, or an objection to AEB’s widest possible deployment across the U.S. vehicle fleet,” the organization wrote in a news release. “Rather, this litigation is about ensuring a rule that maximizes driver and pedestrian safety and is technologically feasible.”
The industry has invested more than $1 billion developing automatic emergency braking, which helps detect potential collisions with vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists. AEB provides a warning to a driver and automatically engages the braking system should the driver not respond.
In 2016, major automakers agreed to roll out AEB on every new vehicle by 2025, which Auto Innovators says has happened.
But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formalized a rule concerning the technology last April that included the no-contact requirement. In June, Auto Innovators petitioned for reconsideration, with Bozzella noting in a letter to Congress at the time that NHTSA’s data showed one tested vehicle met the stopping distance requirements in the final rule. The agency denied the request in November.
In a statement, NHTSA said it generally doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
In the final AEB rule, the agency wrote: “NHTSA believes that lowering the performance requirement to one that allows for contact would fail to treat safety as the preeminent factor for this final rule and otherwise be inconsistent with the goals of the Safety Act.”
Several stakeholders did support the no-contact requirements. In a statement, product testing nonprofit Consumer Reports said many AEB systems don’t reliably perform at higher speeds or operate effectively to protect pedestrians at night.
“It is profoundly disappointing that automakers are suing to block this lifesaving automatic emergency braking rule,” William Wallace, Consume Reports’ safety advocacy director, said in a statement. “AEB performance among new vehicle models is uneven. This rule is needed because everyone on our roads should be able to benefit from automatic emergency braking systems that meet reasonable minimum standards.
“People should be able to trust that if their car has AEB,” Wallace continued, “it will work reliably at various speeds, during the day and at night, and when it detects a pedestrian. NHTSA already has shown it is feasible today to meet this baseline, yet the agency still gave automakers five full years of lead time to bring lower-performing AEB systems into compliance.”
Additionally, Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, added in a statement that as autonomous vehicle technology progresses, vehicles must have the capability to be able to brake at all speeds and in all kinds of conditions.
“The AEB Rule is the most impactful regulation for roadway safety issued in years,” she said, adding that with the size and wealth of the auto industry, “it is remarkable that it would be unable to meet the requirements in the AEB Rule by September 2029.”
Auto Innovators in the news release noted that it believes it is the prerogative of the incoming Trump administration to repeal or revise the AEB rule.
The Transportation Department has 40 days to submit the administrative record to the D.C. Circuit. The court will then set a briefing schedule.
