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Honda Crash Detection System
MImeKillEr writes "MSNBC is reporting that Honda Motor Co. unveiled an early crash-detection system for one of their vehicles. The system is unique in working even before the driver responds. A radar in the front of the car stashed behind the Honda logo detects vehicles within a range of about 300 feet ahead. It then taps the brake and tightens the seatbelt. A buzzer goes off and a light on the dash is illuminated. If the driver responds, the braking power is boosted. If the driver fails to respond, the system kicks in and brakes more while also tightening the seat belt. Unfortunately, Japanese regulations don't allow for the system to fully stop the vehicle."
What about if you are driving along then you get cut up...how hard will the system engage the breaks? enough to make you skid?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
You mean to tell me whilst I'm driving on I-4 every morning every time some idiot kid in a tricked out Honda (stupid large muffler, big fin, silly rims... pet hate :)) cuts me off I'll be rammed in the back by the his idiot friend who happens to be tailgating me because my car decides it needs to brake?
I mean anything. Traffic accidents are one of the biggest killers in America (#1 killer of kids, I do believe). And yet it is so unnecessary to allow driving to continue being so dangerous.
Regular driving exams, say every three to five years: great idea.
Graduated licensing programs: great idea.
Mandatory driver training: great idea.
Black boxes reporting accident data: great idea.
Automatic safety systems: great idea.
Photo radar: great idea.
Hell, GPS tracking of vehicles would, if it reduced traffic deaths by a few percent, would be well worth the loss of privacy.
I'm at the maximum safe driver discounts. I haven't even been close to being in an accident in some fifteen years (arsehole ran a red light!). I maintain an attitude of defensive driving.
I'm not worried that I'll be the cause of an accident. But I'm scared shitless of your driving, because you are, in all probability, one of the drivers who is a threat to my continued well-being.
I'm quite willing to jump through some annoying hoops -- the repeated testing, the black box, the privacy invasions -- in order to save my life. I treasure my freedoms and privacy, I detest government interference, etcetera... but I value my life more than all that.
So bring it on.
Let's get our streets safe.
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I doubt it will jump to any rash decisions.
I'm not sold, it jumping to even one rash decision is one too many.
I drive on the NJ Turnpike to and from work. Drivers there are always moving at high speed, making sudden lane changes and/or tailgating.
If it thinks someone suddenly pulling in front of me is good enough reason to hit my brakes, there's going to be a thirty car pile-up behind me as all of the tailgaters come smashing into me at 90 MPH.
No thanks.
Let's say you're on a 6-lane highway. All three lanes in your direction have cars ahead. You turn this thing on, and it follows the car in front of you.
Now the highway turns sharply to the right. Suddenly oncoming traffic is directly in front of you. How does it know which car to "follow", i.e. keep a safe distance from? If it makes a mistake, thinking you need to keep a safe distance from oncoming cars, when you go around the bend it'll slam on the brakes and you'll get rear-ended (unless of course the person behind you also has this system, in which case he'd stop too. In fact all cars would stop at every sharp turn).
Even if the system somehow knows exactly how much the road curves in front of you (which I doubt unless the road has transmitters or other indicators), it would be very hard to maintain a lock on the same car. Police radar cannot distinguish between two cars that are one behind the other. And if it doesn't track a specific car, how can it tell the difference between an oncoming car and a car ahead slamming on the brakes?
bp
since when has a volvo ever been considered a "sports car"?
The C70 does 0-60 in 6.8 seconds, for starters. Mine tops out around 135. It's one heck of a sports car.
What's your damage, Heather?
Well, that brings up a whole new topic....as we all live to be older..we need to consider when you are too OLD to drive...not by just age...but, probably testing at a certain age.
I think Dennis Miller put it best.."I don't think you should be allowed to drive IF you are old enough to remember when there WEREN'T any cars..."
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
They would have a lot of courage to put out something in the market like that. I could see a lot of people blaming the device for accidents. How would they prove the system worked properly?
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
You know, the article doesn't say so, but I'm guessing this puppy is only engaged with cruise control, and is intended as a safeguard against highway hypnosis or simply falling asleep at the wheel. Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense. If you are taking evasive action, you probably don't have your cruise control on. And for last-minute evasive action when cruise control is on, I would guess Honda has already factored that into the device. It can probably detect sharp direction changes. Still, I'd want to be VERY reassured of those safeguards before I employed the technology. Let's wait and see how well the system works in Japan before we slam Honda too much.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Volvo unveiled this in their safety vehicle about a year ago. It hasn't made it into a non-concept car yet, but this technology seems nearly identical.
sig.
As much as I love technology, I still hold my own discretion in higher regard. I can see how something like this COULD be useful in some situations, but typically there's so much going on around me on the road at any given time that I'd rather rely on my own judgment than place faith in a machine.
Also, if this type of thing eventually becomes common in cars, I could see how something like this could motivate some people to pay LESS attention to the road and be more likely to cause accidents than that would have without it. I wouldn't mind if the device was designed in such a way so that it merely redirected attention to another aspect of driving while providing a safety buffer, but something that could encourage people to pay even less attention to their own driving concerns me.
Sounds like a great idea, if a little worrying at first.
I think the article gives slightly the wrong impression; implying that the car takes control if it detects a crash is likely to happen - a good trick if a piece of hardware can predict a crash before a human can ;)
In fact the system seems to detect the liklehood of a crash and warn the driver, tightening seatbelts and readying brakes, and if the driver agrees that a crash is possible and applies the brakes, the system helps this process.
Some good info on the Honda site (good graphics too), here's a snippet:
"This system determines the likelihood of a collision based on driving conditions, distance to the vehicle ahead, and relative speeds, and uses visual and audio warnings to prompt the driver to take preventative action. " ... and I suspect that radar is not the only component.
Seems like this is part of a long term drive in Japan to make safer cars: remember the device that sprayed the driver with lemon scented water if it sensed him/her getting drowsy? Or the breath-alcohol test device that prevented drunk drivers from starting their vehicles?
Apparently, part of the CMS system will also keep the driver in their lane too.
Not sure why such systems are not more available in the West, maybe Japan's drivers are more ready to accept such restrictions on their driving freedom. Whatever the reason they seem to have reasonably safe roads even by Nordic standards
I guess in the West drivers are keener to protect their driving freedoms; this is certainly the case in the UK, but let's face it, most people can't drive well most of the time because driving is risky and stressful. Speeding, driving whilst talking on a mobile phone, driving when sleepy, driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs or prescribed medicines, are too common - and at the end of the day it's just another poor working stiff who ends up in hospital or the cemetery.Back in my Driver training years ago, I remember my instructor having his own break pedal, in the case of emergeny.
Every time he touched the thing, i wanted to hit him. If he thought for even a second that I was going to fast, he'd apply the break. Then when I would reach for it, it wouldn't be there (it would be slightly depressed) and I'd panic.
[sarcasm]
This is just what I want in my car 24/7
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And this is a bad thing? We can wipe out crashes once we get all the cars to drive themselves. I can't wait for the day.
Most people are crappy drivers, and don't think anyways. I am always being tailgated in heavy traffic. "Where are you going to go", they need to pass me and get in my 2 car length space for no reason. I deal with these jerks everyday.
Bring on the automation I say, as long as it runs QNX, hehe.
...having done rescue on a few thousand accidents, and been in a few myself... I don't want some naieve black-box 2nd-guessing my decision to smash into something. As odd as it sounds, consider:
- A nice frozen bridge. You've got a stopped/crashed car or obstruction in front of you, and a 90 ton Semi coming in behind you. Sorry, but I'm gonna get through that obstruction and out of his way, thanks.
- Hitting snow/ice banks at a low speed is a stupid idea that usually gets you stuck.
- If some on-coming idiot swerves into my lane, the last thing I want to do is stop and spend MORE time in his path. Thanks, I might prefer to add a little more energy and get out of his way as quickly as possible.
This idea ranks right up there with cars that refuse to start unless the clutch is pushed in. It sounds like a really great idea... until you stall in a high speed intersection, and then you're dead along with whoever hits you. Rather a shame, considering that you could otherwise just stuff it into gear and crank your car out of the way... but hey, cars never stall, fuel filters never ice up, and timing belts never break.
- SBB
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
I'll probably piss-off the red-bloded Americans here, but man, I can't wait to not drive my car. I want to have fully automated driving. I want to finish work on a Friday afternoon, go home, grab my stuff, go to my car and say "Miami Beach, Please!". I want to watch movies for a couple of hours or finish reading Dune, and when I wake up, I'm parked right at my favorite beach. Same thing for the reverse trip Sunday night and Monday mornings wouldn't be half as bad. Paint fuel-cells into that picture and it wouldn't even tweak the greens.
:)
CMU's robotics program has been working on automated driving systems for years. When I was there I heard one of the professors had outfitted his normal home car with about $1500 of equipment and "drove" to school and back every day mostly hands-off. All based on neural-nets and some snazzy control systems.
And that was like 6 years ago. I'm sure there's wisdom in not rushing into something like this, but I also get the feeling there will be some hard lobbying against it. Like, what happens to truckers, cabbies, UPS/Fed-Ex drivers, etc. etc.? Will the (perhaps undeserved) reputation of dangerous speed-freak truckers come home to roost?
I wonder how Detroit would feel. At first, it's a shinny new feature == more margin. But beyond that, I can't help but see cars become even more commodity. All you really end up caring about is your comfort/ammenities.. there won't be as much attention to "performance".. ahhh.. Detroit will ~love~ it, BMW won't.
You could even share these kind of cars, like the Zip cars, but instead of you going to the cars, they come to you. Or perhaps just the under-carriage comes to you and connects to your personal travel cabin. Then, you pull out of the driveway and merge into a long train of like-designed cabins-on-wheels, all virtually-linked together via 802.11z. The road/car system routes you shortest-dijkstra-path to your destination and then your car parks itself once it's dropped you off. There's traffic density that would make clog up modern highways for years, but its all flow-controlled, so you go 120MpH with only inches between cars, so your trip takes half the time.
The moving sidewalk (armchair) of the future?
Well, I've seen aritcles in road and track where pro drivers were able to shave a few tenths of a second of their lap time by turning off the ASC, so obivously they were a little better than the system. But the average Joe is not Micheal Schumacher and has no business turning off the system (unless they're doing some sort of auto cross event).
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
A freind-of-a-friend got the biggest trailer hitch he could find for just this problem. He doesn't have a trailer; it's just additional metal to slow down/inflict damage on tailgaters.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
ABS makes a simple interface work as advertised with fewer exceptional cases, and lowers the amount of experience needed to achieve proficiency.
It corrected a flaw in the interface, not in the user. The same is true of traction control. The brake and the steering wheel now, "do what you mean," much more often than before.
This has got to be the coolest car ad I've ever seen. All real. Wow!
Generally speaking, I am surprised to see how negative Slashdotters are to new technology, especially before knowing much about how it works. The assumption always seems to be that the implementation will be completely useless, dangerous and insecure.
New Technology is OK when its just geek toys, but when your life depends on it things are different. A historical example: Dive computers for SCUBA diving. Basically a SCUBA diver can stay at a given depth for only a certain amount of time. Exceed that time and going straight to the surface is no longer a safe option, decompression stops are now required to avoid injury or death. The traditional way to determine time was to use the US Navy dive tables, or something closely based on these tables. In the 90s dive computers appeared and I recall a discussion on a dive boat. Everyone was interested and curious, but who was actually using the dive computers? Doctors, lawyers, business types and such. Who was using mechanical analog guages and dive tables? Engineers, programmers, and other techies.
Slashdotters may be more accepting of technology than most. Then again we're also far more likely to make regular off-site backups.
Knowledge and acceptance of technology is one thing, but with that knowledge you also learn a great deal about the problems of technology. Things can fail easily and sometimes things designed to help end up merely causing more problems and work. In this case I think it seems far more likely that adding in a dangerous, unpredictable element that will only have limited knowledge of the situation and may not even be technically capable of doing what its job effectively into a dangerous enviroment is likely to cause more accidents. Anything that controls the brakes of the car that isn't directly driving it seems like a bad idea to me.