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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."
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.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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.........
...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?