Chevy Sets the Standard for Standard Safety Features

Technology has improved cars by making them faster, more connected, and easier to drive. But probably the most important technological achievement has been enhanced passenger safety. If you live and work in Huntsville, then you know the value of having a car that is safe. When you buy a vehicle from Guntersville Chevrolet, your Huntsville Chevrolet Dealer, you have the peace of mind that your car will get you wherever you may be headed in Alabama.

By looking at recent history, you can see how Chevy is improving safety features year after year. The key has been leveraging innovations like cameras and radar to create different driver assistance features and then integrating them into a seamless safety system, known as Chevrolet Safety Assist. Best of all, these features come standard on most Chevy cars, trucks, and SUVs, so you don’t have to pay a premium to get to where you are going safely.

The Rise of Vehicular Safety

Car safety wasn’t always a major concern for drivers, until statistics starting coming out showing that many folks were getting killed and injured in automobile accidents. Public pressure began to increase across America for the auto industry to build safer cars. This led to the creation of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 1970. The NHTSA began working with automakers like Chevy to improve vehicle safety by adding features like three-point seat belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes, and daytime running lights. However, Chevrolet knew this was just a minimum set of standards and decided that to best serve its customers, it would have to exceed these standards.

From Crash Tests to Rear View Cameras

In 1978, the NHTSA began performing 35-mile per hour frontal crash tests on passenger vehicles. This was done to see how these vehicles performed in collisions so that the NHTSA could alert manufacturers to issues with their vehicles so that corrective actions could be taken to make these vehicles safer. These crash tests would later be expanded to include side-impact and rollover testing.

In 1993, the NHTSA began giving a 5-star rating system for new passenger vehicles, allowing consumers to know which cars were the safest. As the NHTSA performed each test and issued its ratings, this led Chevy to improve the performance of its vehicles. For example, the 2021 Chevy Trax, Equinox, and Traverse were all among the vehicles receiving 5-star ratings from the NHTSA.

However, the engineers at Chevrolet knew that passive safety was not enough, that these systems, while important, would only protect the driver and passengers in the event of a collision. The key was to develop technologies that could help a driver actively avoid a crash. These innovations would also serve to reduce the impact of a collision, thus reducing injuries.

One of the first such inventions was the rear vision camera, which is now standard on every vehicle manufactured by Chevy. The rear vision camera gives you a video image of the area directly behind your car, truck, or SUV. As soon as you put your vehicle in reverse, the image will appear on your infotainment screen so you can reduce the chances of backing into another vehicle or pedestrian. Nevertheless, Chevrolet knew this was just a start, which is why it developed the Chevy Safety Assist system.

Chevy Safety Assist

Chevy Safety Assist is a bundle of six active safety features in one exceptional program:

• Automatic Emergency Braking
• Forward Collision Alert
• Front Pedestrian Braking
• Following Distance Indicator
• Lane Keep Assist with Lane Departure Warning
• IntelliBeam Auto High Beam Assist

Sometimes you don’t realize it, but you are following the car in front of you a little too closely. Suddenly, the driver slams on the brakes and, despite your best efforts, your car rear-ends him. Sadly, this happens more often than you’d think. With the Following Distance Indicator, the Chevy Safety Assist will let you know if you are getting too close to the car in front of you.

If a collision becomes imminent, the Forward Collision Alert will sound, letting you know to step on the brakes. Once the system detects this, it will automatically engage the car’s emergency brakes through the Automatic Emergency Braking system. In addition, if you have already manually applied the brakes, this system will add power to bring your Chevy to a safe stop.

These three systems work by using front cameras and radar to detect the vehicle in front of you, measure the distance between you, and engage the emergency systems once it is determined that a crash may occur. Front Pedestrian Braking works in a similar fashion. Here the system’s computer can determine that the object in front of your Chevy is a pedestrian crossing the street and will alert you to this while it engages the emergency braking so you can avoid striking the pedestrian.

Sometimes you get tired or distracted when you are driving. This tends to happen to many of us while we are driving home from a long day at the office. It is not unusual for some folks to start to drift out of their lane. With Lane Keep Assist with Lane Departure Warning, this will not happen as often. If you start to drift out of your lane without signaling, Lane Departure Warning will sound to alert you, while Lane Keep Assist will give slight adjustments to your steering wheel to keep you on the straight and narrow.

Finally, IntelliBeam is the best solution to the problem of using your high beam headlights late at night. Often, you have to keep turning them on and off as you see oncoming traffic or if another vehicle gets in front of you. This not only gets annoying but can be a distraction to you and the other drivers. IntelliBeam takes care of this by turning the high beams on when it judges that the lighting is insufficient and then automatically turns them off when it detects another vehicle or if the lighting improves so that the high beams are no longer necessary.

Chevy Pushes the Envelope With New Safety Features

Chevrolet is always at the forefront of technological innovation, especially when it comes to new safety features. Some of these active features reduce the chance of a crash. The available Safety Alert Seat uses subtle vibrations to your driver’s seat to help you identify the direction of potential collisions. Lane Change Alert with Side Blind Zone Alert makes changing lanes safer. The system uses cameras to determine if there is another vehicle traveling in your blind spot so you can change lanes safely and easily.

Adaptive Cruise Control improves your Chevy’s safety when using cruise control. Rather than adjusting your Chevy’s speed manually, Adaptive Cruise Control will lower your vehicle’s speed if it detects a slower-moving vehicle in front of you and then returns to your desired speed once traffic speeds up. Chevy’s newest models are now getting an even better system – Super Cruise. This advanced version of Adaptive Cruise Control allows for fully hands-free driving along designated highways.

Some of the new technologies help by giving you improved views. High-Definition Surround Vision improves your standard rear vision camera by adding multiple cameras to view multiple angles, including in front of your vehicle, reducing the number of blind spots on your Chevy. This is especially helpful if you are using your Chevy truck or SUV to tow a trailer. The available rear camera mirror works in a similar fashion but displays the extra-wide angles on the mirror so that you don’t have to take your eyes off the road when viewing the camera.

A great many accidents happen when you are backing up in a busy parking lot. Rear Cross Traffic Alert gives a little extra to your rear vision camera, letting you know if a pedestrian or another vehicle is about to cross behind your Chevy when you go to back out of a spot. Similarly, Rear Park Assist makes getting into and out of parking spaces easier by giving you distance alerts to objects behind your car. With Rear Park Assist, you will be a parallel parking champion in no time.

Drive Safer in a Chevy

With its exceptional safety record and a dedication to making driver assistance technologies standard on its vehicles, Chevy has shown its commitment to keeping you and your passengers safe. Come in today to our Huntsville Chevy dealership to test-drive a Chevy car, truck, or SUV for yourself and experience what a difference active driver assistance safety features can make. We will be happy to show you how Chevy is improving vehicle safety year after year.