China’s first mandatory national standard for advanced driving assistance systems – the “Technical Requirements and Test Methods for Automatic Emergency Braking Systems for Light Vehicles” (GB 39901—2025) – will officially come into effect on January 1, 2028. For the first time, in addition to the existing M1 category passenger vehicles (sedans, SUVs, MPVs), this new standard covers N1 category light commercial vehicles (pickup trucks, mini-trucks, etc, with a gross vehicle weight of ≤3.5 tons), expanding the scope of coverage by approximately 30%.
Furthermore, the new standard focuses on vulnerable road users: it adds recognition and testing requirements for three types of targets – pedestrians, bicycles, and scooters – and specifies that the system must provide warnings and braking responses to vulnerable road users crossing the road within the speed range of 20 to 60 km/h.
In actual road traffic accidents in China, collisions occurring at speeds of 60 to 80 km/h account is relatively high. In particular, collisions between vehicles and pedestrians, bicycles, and scooters account for more than 30% of all light vehicle traffic accidents.
It is worth pointing out that this standard is a revision of the recommended national standard “Performance Requirements and Test Methods for Passenger Car Automatic Emergency Braking Systems” (GB/T 39901-2021). This marks the transition for making automatic emergency braking systems for light vehicles from an “optional” feature to a “standard” feature.
The automatic emergency braking system (AEB) monitors the driving environment in front of the vehicle in real time ultilizing sensors such as cameras and millimeter-wave radars, issues a warning signal when a collision risk is detected, and automatically activates the vehicle’s braking system to decelerate the vehicle to avoid or mitigate the consequences of a collision.
In 2025, the AEB system penetration rate in new passenger vehicles in China exceeded 60%, as reported by Chinese news outlet ITHome.
Source: China Central Television, autochinazh.cpm, ITHomes
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