AAA: Consumers Don’t Understand Automatic Braking

Automatic emergency braking systems can avoid crashes or reduce their damage, but U.S. consumers are confused about which systems do what, a study by AAA says.

The auto club notes that some automatic braking systems are designed to bring a car to a halt to avoid colliding with the vehicle it is following. Other systems are designed only to reduce the damage of a front-end crash when the driver fails to hit the brakes quickly enough.

AAA cautions that consumers who don’t know which system they have may be expecting too much from the technology. The organization says two-thirds of the 1,000 people it surveyed assumed all automatic braking systems work the same.