Toyota Touts Next-Generation Safety Features

Toyota Motor Corp. is preparing to catch up with its competitors with an array of electronic safety systems intended to help prevent crashes, Automotive News reports.

The company used a technical presentation for reporters in Tokyo to highlight plans in two years to introduce a new pre-collision safety system that brakes and steers, advanced adaptive cruise control technology and an improved lane-keeping feature. Toyota also aims to install existing active-safety systems in mass-market vehicles such as the Camry within the same time frame.

Toyota announced its plan in Tokyo a week after a wave of unfavorable publicity resulted from its redesigned Corolla sedan receiving a "marginal" rating in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's severe "small overlap" crash test.

Three other Toyota models the Camry sedan, RAV4 crossover and Prius v hybrid recently fared poorly in the same test, which measures the damage when the left quarter of a vehicle's front bumper impacts a fixed object at 40 mph.

Some of the company's rivals, including Honda, Subaru and Mitsubishi, have earned top ratings in the IIHS test.

Toyota tells reporters it will make running changes in affected models to strengthen their frames and A pillars. The company says it also is engineering its next-generation Toyota New Global Architecture specifically to meet the IIHS test. Vehicles built on the new platform are due in 2015.