During the course of a meeting with automotive engineers in Washington on Wednesday, US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is making a change to its star-rating consumer advisory system, by adding two emergency-braking technologies.

According to the details shared by Foxx, the two high-tech braking technologies which the NHTSA has proposed to add to its New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) – under which the agency rates vehicles on a five-point scale of safety – include crash imminent braking (CIB) and dynamic brake support (DBS).

Under the NCAP, the NHTSA currently rates vehicles – on a scale of one to five stars - based on the results of frontal and side crash tests, as well as rollover propensity. To that list of recommended safety features, the NHTSA wants to add the CIB and DBS emergency-braking technologies.

The CIB technology is related to the installation of sensors up front on cars, so that the brakes are applied automatically when the sensors detect an imminent crash. The DBS technology, meanwhile, relates to a forceful slamming of the brakes of a car if a driver has not hit the brakes hard enough to avoid a crash.

About the emergency-braking technologies, Foxx said that the NHTSA’s plan to include the technologies in its NCAP “marks an enormous leap in the evolution of auto safety by encouraging adoption of new technologies to keep drivers and their passengers safe on our roads.”