In a proposed ruling brought forth last week, the the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) seeks to make mandatory that all new passenger vehicles - including SUVs and crossovers - be fitted with a reversing camera, or in their parlance “rear-view visibility systems”.
This would the vast majority of new cars in the USA would have to meet this equipment spec in order to be sold, but so far it’s unclear whether the ruling would also apply to certain light trucks such as the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado 1500 given a similar cross section of buyers and their inherently poor rearward visibility.
However, given that it stipulates that the ruling asserts all vehicles under the 10,000-lbs (4,535kg) to be under its sway, either manufactured locally or imported, it’s safe to assume this to be the case.
The rule will reportedly start its ‘phasing-in’ period starting with all vehicles manufactured starting May 1st, continuing an effort to implement standardised rearward camera inclusion by the US Department of Transportation back in 2014. A previous undertaking was active all the way back in 2008 when the United States Congress passed a law with a similar mandate.
It’s been a long time coming, but with the NHTSA’s muscle and influence backing things up this time around, it seems like automakers have little choice now but to comply. Automakers have been consistently stepping up their standard safety standards with each annual update to a given model, usually regardless of government mandate.
Globally, many are already including Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) as a standard feature, and prominent manufacturers have pledged to make it a range-wide fitment for all models in the early stages of the next decade, potentially averting countless accidents and saving an innumerable number of lives.
