PHILADELPHIA – The Board of Directors of the American Trucking Associations has decided to “urge” both truck and car manufacturers to equip all new vehicles with automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems and that ATA has “offered its support for a potential regulation” addressing this type of collision-mitigation safety technology.

The trucking lobby issued the announcement at a news conference on Oct. 20, held here at the close of its annual Management Conference & Exhibition

“In our role as a safety leader, we believe ATA needs to be at the forefront of advocating for proven safety technologies,” said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves.

“The experience of our member fleets tells us that automatic emergency braking systems hold tremendous promise and as such, we believe manufacturers should make this equipment standard and the federal government should seriously look at issuing regulatory standards,” he added.

The newly elected Chairman of ATA, Pat Thomas, senior vice president of state government affairs for UPS, pointed out that in September, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it had reached an agreement with 10 automakers to make AEB systems standard on new cars.

“We believe our friends in the truck manufacturing community and the rest of the automakers should join them in putting automatic emergency braking systems on all new vehicles sold in the United States,” Thoimas remarked.

Besides following on the news that NHTSA has signed on some car makers to voluntarily equip new vehicles with AEB, the move by ATA comes just days after the same federal agency advised that it will consider requiring that new trucks be equipped with forward-collision-mitigation systems that incorporate automatic emergency braking.