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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."
Just imagine driving on a mountain road and out of a right curb comes a car driving the other way. The radar sees it right in front of you, coming your way. How does it react ? I'd hate to see it break suddenly, particularly if the road is wet or snowy.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
And here I bought a new 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid. I hate when ya buy something and then they come out with new features.
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Free your mind.
...drivers in New York suddenly face a severe shortage of parking space, as they are unable to parallel-park more than one Honda within 300 feet of each other.
Hereâ(TM)s more from Honda:
CMS
So itâ(TM)s more than just the 300 ft test, which would be arbitrary. It looks at "distance, speed and and anticipated path".
Sounds worse than a backseat driver though.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
Funny this system sounds like my girlfriend!!
It gives me notifaction to brake when a car is hundreds of feet in front of me... even when doing 15 mph.
- Sig
HAL: "Let me put it this way, Mr Amer. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
An in-dash audio/video capture system allows the driver to make any final requests if they are clear headed enough. If not, it'll make a great file for collision and safetey research centers or alt.binaries.tasteless.
An embedded MP3 begins to play a prayer in the religious demoniation of the driver's choice or, if the driver is an athieist, something by, uh, Isaac Asimov or something.
The driver's lower portion is wrapped tightly in Saran-Wrap[tm] by robotic arms so that the ambulence workers can be shielded from the soiled underwear.
A small hole opens in the seat, and a pair of cybernetic lips firmly and lovingly kisses the driver's ass goodbye.
--- Ban humanity.
DING, your door is ajar.
DING, your headlights are on.
DING, you just crashed into a semi.
Three days over 6 months to get a motorcycle license in Oz (NSW), after you have completed the road rules test, which you may take at your leisure.
Day 1, you are required to demonstrate you are able to ride a bike before you're given your L's (Learner plates/license). 3-6 months later, you're back for another two days worth of obstacle avoidance, emercengy breaking and general "how not to get dead" theory and practise. Gruesome video footage of people who fuck it up is optional. You are then tested on your emergency skills, plus a standard road ride, before being issued a Provisional license. This allows you to do upto 80km/h, upto 0.02BAC (one standard drink), and three whole points. You get to wallow in your lameness for a year or three - if you fuck up, you're off the road. If you don't, you get an unrestricted license. By this time, you have real experience under your belt, are now 20+ years old(er
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
I wonder what the radar profile of a pedestrian is.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
...and this little red beeping "Crash" light flashing on the dashboard.
Real helpful, Honda. {smirk} Thanks.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Regular driving exams, say every three to five years: great idea.
Graduated licensing programs: great idea.
Mandatory driver training: great idea.
Stop right there. You were on a great roll there. We have hideous safety statistics in this country precisely because we give out driver's licenses in Crackerjack boxes. And we respond by lowering speed limits, which doesn't really work.
You want safe roads at any cost? Really? OK, simple: National 15 MPH speed limit, enforced with severe jail time. Or maybe death. Didn't think so.
You make a few great points here. Driver training and licensing in this country is a joke. I don't have his statistics handy, but there is an ER doctor in Southern California who is tracking the DMV records of a group of drivers who participate in performance driving schools (NASA and SCCA street schools, Open Tracks, AutoX schools and the like). He's seeing better than 90% reductions in both accident and moving violation rates. Ninety Percent! From better driver training. Not automagic systems that drive for you, just having a human that can actually control the machine.
Black boxes reporting accident data: great idea.
There are very real privacy concerns here. And very real property right concerns. It's not that having good data in a real accident is bad, it's the legal environment surrounding such data in the country that is horrifying. We have an environment where speed limits are set for political (I don't want them going fast near *my* house) and revenue reasons, not actual safety and engineering reasons. Yet exceeding those artificial speed limits is prima facie evidence of fault in any situation.
Automatic safety systems: great idea.
Maybe. Have you ever been in a situation where avoiding the accident required accelerating? How do you think the brake grabbing systems described here are going to react?
Photo radar: great idea.
If it were actually being used to enhance safety in places where the speed limits are set rationally, yes. But they're not. They're used to enhance revenue in places where the speed limits are set arbitrarily.
Let's look at a related issue, one that based on your comment is near and dear to your heart: Red light cameras. There have been numerous cases over the past couple of years of municipalities reducing yellow light duration to increase revenue. In Fairfax County, VA, cameras were installed at one intersection because of high incidences of red light runners. The cameras were catching an average of 52 events a day. Increasing the duration of the yellow from 4s to 5.5s reduced that number from 52 to less than 1. Engineering fixed the problem, not enforcement.
Hell, GPS tracking of vehicles would, if it reduced traffic deaths by a few percent, would be well worth the loss of privacy.
Do I *have* to quote Franklin?
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 hear you. The average joe out there can't drive. The solution is to *teach them to drive*. It really is that simple.
Let's get our streets safe.
Through training and safety engineering, yes. Trying to idiot proof the roads and cars isn't going to work. Reducing the idiocy of the average driver will. (And does!)
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
" If the driver fails to respond, the system kicks in and brakes more while also tightening the seat belt. "
What if I'm *trying* to hit someone because they cut me off. Is there a button to disable it?
For those humour impaired people, I'm joking.
Just do what my neighbor does (hes a cranky 90 year old bastard who hates everyone)... he tosses marbles out the window at any car who is tailgating him (I've seen the bag of marbles)!
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
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?