Important Safety System Now Standard On 2017 Toyota RAV 4, Highlander, Corolla, and Avalon

The auto industry recently met with regulators and safety groups and collectively decided to add forward collision prevention and emergency auto braking to all vehicles by 2022. However, Toyota is taking the step now and adding the technology, standard across all trims on its most popular models as its 2017 model year vehicles are introduced.

Starting with the 2017 Toyota RAV 4, Highlander, Corolla, and Avalon, Toyota has begun to roll out its Toyota Safety Sense System (TSS). TSS is a forward collision prevention with an auto-braking system that can prevent a Toyota from hitting a pedestrian or rear-ending another car. It works using various sensors and radar to scan the road ahead. When it detects that a collision is imminent, it alerts the driver to brake and will take action if the driver is unable, or cannot respond quickly enough.

This technology is not new and has been available on Toyota’s top trims at an added cost. It is still not standard on many luxury vehicles. The last Infiniti and Jaguar vehicles this writer tested didn’t have the system. In a recent study, IIHS determined that systems of this type can reduce rear-endings by as much as 40%. That test was not a theoretical one. The group simply measured the number of real-world accidents that happened to given models that had the optional system in comparison to the same models that did not.

Toyota plans to make the system available on 28 of 30 models, and all trims of those 28 models, for the 2017 model year.