Biden administration to require advanced safety tech on all new cars and trucks

The Biden administration plans to require that all new cars and trucks come with pedestrian-collision avoidance systems that include automatic emergency braking technology by the end of the decade.

In an interview, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the requirement is designed to reduce pedestrian deaths, which have been on the rise in the post-Covid 19 era.

"So many Americans [are] losing their lives on our roadways," Buttigieg said. "We think we really have a responsibility to get this technology to be standard across the U.S. fleet."

The new standards will require all cars to avoid contact at up to 62 mph and mandate that they must be able to detect pedestrians in the dark. They will also require braking at up to 45 mph when a pedestrian is detected.  

The Transportation Department projects the rule could save 360 lives a year and prevent 24,000 injuries.

Automatic emergency braking "prevents collisions. And collisions kill people — it's that simple," Buttigieg said. 

In a statement, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry trade group representing auto manufacturers, said it hadn't seen the new rule, so it couldn't comment directly.

It said that technologies like automatic emergency braking have proven "game changing" and that automakers have voluntarily committed to install them on new vehicles.

More from NBC News:

According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, drivers killed more than 7,500 pedestrians in 2022, the most since 1981 — with total deaths having about doubled over the past decade.

The pedestrian fatality rate, at 2.2 per billion vehicle miles traveled, is also higher than pre-pandemic levels, though it began to decline in the first half of 2023.

Research has shown that since the