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Having done some work on automated driving, I have some misgivings about semi-automated driving. ABS, which is a huge advance in vehicle control, hasn't reduced accidents as much as it should. Driver overconfidence seems to increase in ABS-equipped vehicles. Merely adding automated braking, which has been around for years, may not help with passenger cars. It would probably encourage tailgating. It's a big win for heavy trucks, but they have pro drivers. Those guys aren't aggressive drivers, mostly tired ones. Passenger car drivers aren't that consistent.

Tailgating may be acceptable if there's a comm link between the car ahead and the car behind. That's been demonstrated successfully; if anybody in the chain starts to brake, everybody behind them brakes too. It needs to be coupled with enough smarts that not too many vehicles become a tight group, and a vehicle can't close up behind something that can stop shorter than it can.

Studies of crashes by Mercedes indicate that 80% of accidents would have been avoided if braking started 500ms sooner. Those aren't the severe accidents, though.

Anyway, while radar-controlled automated braking has its uses, it's not an answer in itself.

The Eaton VORAD anti-collision radar does just that. It tracks up to 20 targets in front of your vehicle. The main purpose is to help prevent accidents; you get a loud alarm, and some versions will start braking on their own. But it also logs information. Range, range rate, and azimuth are captured, along with the vehicle's own data (speed, turning angles braking, etc.) Accidents can be reconstructed from that data. It's especially good for demonstrating that some other vehicle ran a stop sign.

There are about 20,000 of those units on the road, mostly on heavy trucks.

We use VORAD units here at Overbot, For test purposes, This is far more advanced than a speed gun; it's a true phased-array steerable radar. You get tracking data. I've had one pointed out a window overlooking an intersection, and have software that lets me watch the traffic go by. You can reliably see cars and motorcycles; bicycles and strollers are marginal targets.

Personally, I don't get why they didn't use low, bumper-mounted radar to detect things like giant obtrusions so that axles didn't get broke and the like.

Team Overbot has just such a sensor, the Eaton VORAD, on their vehicle. Sadly, they withdrew from the race one month before the start, since they did not expect to be ready. I'm eager to see them succeed next year.

Having worked in this field for a while, I've seen this sort of thing before. Radar is a nice option, but ultrasound is also adequate for presence detection.

You can get a radar side sensor with an Eaton VORAD (snazzy video on this page) as a factory option on many trucks. Clever Devices' Seymor is ultrasound based and pretty much available for transit buses. Both of these systems have warning LEDs on the A-pillars. I've also seen variations on the Muth mirrors where a chevron that is only visible to the driver pops up when a side system triggers.

This isn't a dumb speed gun radar. It's a beam-steered phased array Doppler radar, reporting range, azimuth, and range rate on all the vehicles going by. Multiple vehicles show as multiple targets. There's a Visual Basic app that comes with the unit, if purchased in the R&D configuration with the serial port adapter. We run it under QNX, and have our own interface programs.

The Eaton VORAD (stock version) is on tens of thousands of heavy trucks. It's intended to keep trucks from rear-ending other vehicles, which it is reported to do quite well. In some configurations, it will initiate braking on its own.

The vehicle version also stores data for accident reconstruction. Unlike simple airbag recorders, this unit shows what the other vehicles were doing. ("And here's where the other car ran the stop sign.")

The VORAD technology is priced around $2000, which seems to be limiting adoption. But it's a reliable box with millions of miles on truck bumpers.

This is a bit late, but Eaton Corporation has a collision warning system called VORAD made for semi-trucks. There's a short little video here that gives a little demonstration. I'd bet Honda's is somewhat similar.

Actually, these types of systems have been studied intensely for years. The US DOT has a whole program centered on smart safety devices called the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI). Many of the OEMs have also been pursuing this in their own labs.

I should point out that intelligent cruise control (speed adjustment to maintain gap between cars) is already in some cars in the US market (e.g., Infinity Q45). Europe and Japan have more models to choose from (cite your favorite US lawsuit quote here). ICC (aka ACC) with limited (~33%) braking authority is just around the corner.

Also, and perhaps more relevant to /. fears, the Eaton Vorad collision warning and ICC system has been on the market for years. There are a lot of trucks out there with these in use.

I have one of these units pointed out my window right now, looking at an intersection. (I'm testing one for a robotics application.) Here's what it reports:

• [151] # 68: 101.1 ft. -5.3 fps 0.046 radians
  [151] # 70: 224.6 ft. 38.2 fps -0.032 radians
  [152] # 68: 100.8 ft. -5.3 fps 0.046 radians
  [152] # 70: 226.9 ft. 38.4 fps -0.032 radians
  [153] # 68: 100.4 ft. -5.3 fps 0.048 radians
  [153] # 70: 229.0 ft. 38.4 fps -0.032 radians
  [154] # 68: 100.1 ft. -5.4 fps 0.050 radians
  [154] # 70: 232.0 ft. 38.5 fps -0.032 radians
  [155] # 68: Dropped.
  [155] # 70: 234.5 ft. 38.6 fps -0.032 radians
  [156] # 70: Dropped.

This allows detailed accident reconstruction. The data can be viewed graphically, of course, and trajectories and speeds can be plotted right up to the crash. If any vehicle in a collision has this equipment, it's possible to tell what the other vehicles are doing.

There are tens of thousands of big rigs on the road with these units right now. They're starting to appear in RVs. A few more years will see them in cars, as the price comes down.

They do more than log. There are warning alarms. Some versions will slow down the vehicle. These devices are already reducing accident rates for big trucks. Another generation of this technology and radar/computer control will prevent many more collisions.

Dividing the braking task between the driver and the computers is tough. But we already have elaborate ABS systems with computers and gyros, and those are well-accepted. This is the next step. It's reasonably clear that when a collision is inevitable if braking isn't started within a few hundred milliseconds, the anti-collision system should apply the brakes. At that point, it's too late for human intervention. Whether the system should always prevent tailgating is less clear. VORAD units will do that in cruise control mode, but the driver has to turn that on.