2021 Chevrolet Trailblazer Shores Up Standard Active Safety Features
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Active safety features have become a widespread convenience across the auto industry, though General Motors and its brands haven’t climbed aboard the bandwagon. That is, until the 2021 Chevrolet Trailblazer made its debut on Wednesday.
The sub-compact plus crossover will be the first Chevrolet to make a suite of active safety features standard. Many rival models to the Chevrolet lineup have baked in a slew of active safety features as standard equipment for years now. We’re talking about the Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV-4, Ford Edge, Nissan Murano, and other hot-selling vehicles in the crossover segment.
The 2019 Chevrolet Blazer does not offer any active safety features standard
The Chevrolet Blazer is a poster child for this kind of backward thinking. While the Ford Edge and Nissan Murano offer standard active safety features, Blazer buyers don’t even unlock the option for automatic emergency braking before spending $43,895 on the range-topping Premier trim.
For the 2021 Chevrolet Trailblazer, the brand revealed it will include Front Pedestrian Braking, Automatic Emergency Braking, as well as Lane Keep Assist with Lane Departure Warning. Further, Adaptive Cruise Control, Rear Park Assist and a High Definition Rear Vision Camera will all be optional.
2021 Chevrolet Trailblazer RS Interior
Automatic emergency braking is the big ticket. Automakers have moved to include the technology as safety organizations, like the insurance institute-funded IIHS, call on automakers to step up their game. Crash avoidance technology is also a key part to IIHS crash test standards today, and flunking the sector will keep any car from earning a Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick+.
The Trailblazer likely starts a trend for Chevrolet, as we expect Chevy’s entire portfolio will eventually offer the same standard set of active safety technologies. Look for an announcement in the near future for the company’s official branding for its technology suite, too. Ford most recently jumped in with its “Co-Pilot 360” bundle of crash avoidance technology. Honda calls its bundle “Honda Sensing,” as another example.
2020 Cadillac XT6 Premium Luxury
The Trailblazer doesn’t have the honor of being the first GM vehicle with standard active safety features, though. The Cadillac XT6 will actually be the first to include standard automatic emergency braking. Cadillac will also offer a more advanced system locked away in an options package.
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Are we forgetting about Buick here? They are also offering a Standard Safety package.
Buick isn’t exempt. On the Enclave Avenir, you still have to option the tech package to get forward collision alert.
The 2020 Buick Encore GX the Trailblazer’s platform twin is also offering the same Safety packages as Standard.
GM use to be one of the first in the segment. In the 90’s they have anti-lock brakes on most cars before anyone else did. Not sure why some of this has changed. Maybe its the fact they rather have it correct instead of just putting it out there. From reviews I’ve seen GM has one of the best systems to avoid pedestrians, so maybe the extended time to release it did pay off. Some test shows other brands like BMW not even stop for the pedestrian and just ran the dummy over.
I believe GM is waiting to see how the lawsuits against tesla comes out before they make all these features standard equiptment on all vehicles.
Oh an interesting thought. I wonder the reason why the new Buick and Chevy have the safety features as standard now is because these vehicles are using the new Electrical architecture (introduced with the CT5). Now that they have a system in place that can handle the increased flow of information they feel comfortable to include them as standard.
Before reading the entire article, I was like “Why is there a Kia Telluride pictured in this article? Oops, it’s a Cadillac. Who would have ever guessed in the ’90s when Kias were el-cheapo econo-boxes that someday they could be confused for a Caddy lol