New cars will be packed with significantly more life-saving safety equipment than before within three years — if Europe's lawmakers get their way.
The European Commission is pushing for the mandatory fitment of 11 pieces of technology designed to prevent or mitigate accidents — saving an estimated 7300 lives in the next decade.
These include autonomous emergency braking, lane-keep assistance and fatigue monitoring systems, all of which could feature on every new car from 2021 under proposals.
The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) said the new ruling would be a ‘free lunch' for the UK Government, reducing road casualties and saving billions of pounds without requiring any investment.
The EU policymakers estimate that the addition of all 11 features will not just save over 7000 lives across Europe but it will also prevent 38,000 serious injuries between 2020 and 2030.
As part of the European Commission's new initiative announced last week, lawmakers said they wanted revisions to the General Safety Regulation for vehicles to “ensure that all Europeans benefit from the latest developments in technology”.
The commission said all the features offer significant potential to compensate for human error — a major factor in most road accidents — and will play a part in the gradual progression towards a road network predominantly made up of automated vehicles.
The new proposals want SUVs and vans to be crash-tested in the same way as traditional motors following the increased uptake in these vehicles being used as passenger cars.