Ford has arrived in the 21st century.

According to a report from Mashable, Detroit’s Ford Motor Company is finally adding “automated driving” features to its cars, like many other automotive companies have already been doing for months or years. Specifically, upcoming Ford cars will boast what was referred to in a Thursday press release as “pre-collision assist with pedestrian detection.” Translation: Ford cars are getting automatic brakes.

Going forward, the driver will not be the only entity in the car watching the road ahead. Also serving that role will be the assist system, which is made up of a camera mounted on the windshield and a built-in radar system. These two devices work in tandem to watch for traffic in the path of the vehicle. Specifically, the system scans shapes and automatically tries to match them to a database of “pedestrian shapes.”

If and when the system hits a match and determines that a pedestrian is in the path of the car, it will send an alert to the driver. The driver will have a few seconds to respond of his or her own accord, after which the car will essentially take matters into its own hands and automatically apply the brakes.

Of course, this all could become very much of a hassle if the pedestrian detection system were to decide that a tree or bush on the side of the road was actually a person in the road. However, Ford says that it has tested the system on three different continents, in a range of different situations, while covering more than 300,000 miles. In other words, the company is fairly certain that the detection system is smart enough to tell the difference between serious collision threats and other nearby objects.

The pre-collision technology will make its way into Ford automobiles throughout the 2015 model year. The 2015 Ford Mondeo, a car sold in Europe, will feature the commercial debut of the new system.