It’s Thursday again, which means it’s time for us to continue with our new weekly look into the technologies and features that make your vehicle so great. Today, we’re going to take a look at Automatic Emergency Braking, a driver-assistive safety feature that could potentially save your life. In our opinion, that makes it pretty important, so we’ll give you the rundown on exactly what it is and, perhaps more importantly, how to use it.
[ READ MORE: What is Lane Departure Warning? ]
What is Automatic Emergency Braking?
Automatic Emergency Braking is perhaps one of the most important driver-assistive safety features available in new cars today. There are plenty of features that are very helpful in making sure you remain on the road where you’re supposed to be, and plenty that enhance how safe you are behind the wheel. But Automatic Emergency Braking has the ability to completely take over your vehicle and prevent you from rear ending the vehicle in front of you, or hitting anything else in front of you for that matter.
As we always say, features like this are no substitute for your best judgment. But if you are driving and happen to look over your shoulder, or glance into your mirror, and the vehicle in front of you comes to an abrupt stop, or someone darts out in front of the vehicle, automobiles with Automatic Emergency Braking installed will automatically apply the brakes and bring your vehicle to a stop, completely avoiding the collision.
Often, if there is enough time, the vehicle will start by sending you visual and audible alerts to the fact that a collision is imminent. This is to give you time to brake or steer clear of the obstruction, but if you don’t manage to do it in time – again, Automatic Emergency Braking will take over and prevent the collision by braking in time.
If you’d like to find out which Toyota and Scion vehicles are equipped with a program like this, feel free to give us a call and we’d happily fill you in. If you still need more information about the program, then you can watch the video featuring Rick & Scout from MyCarDoesWhat.org below, where they give you a little more information.