Slashdot Mirror
Self-Parking Cars Coming To U.S.
Rio writes "Vehicles that are able to parallel park themselves while drivers sit and relax behind the wheel are coming to the United States, according to a Local 6 News report. New Toyota hybrid cars are now available in Britain with a $700 "parking assist" option. Local 6 news showed video of a driver sitting and allowing the car's steering wheel to turn on its own as it pulled into a tight parking spot on a London street. The reporter never touched the wheel as the car parked itself.Toyota says expect to see the technology pop up in the U.S. soon." Here is our previous coverage of their release in Japan.
Smarter cars will just make dumber drivers.
Trust me, your kids will still need driver's ed, so they can learn that the left lane is for PASSING, IDIOT, and if you arent PASSING, get OUT of the left lane, IDIOT! Not to mention the whole turn on your turn signal BEFORE you start to turn, and BEFORE you start to brake for the turn. Oh, and the that the accleration lane on an highway onramp is for ACCELERATING, as in you are supposed to match speed with traffic already on the highway, not force it to brake heavily or swerve so you can merge on at 40MPH. And for good measure, I'll throw in when turning at an intersection, turn into the CLOSEST lane. Eg, if you are turning right, turn into the RIGHTmost lane of the road you are turning into, and if you are turning left, turn into the LEFTmost lane of the road you are turning into (and then merge to the right, if you arent passing).
Of course, I suspect its been a long time since driver's ed taught any of that, since so few people seem to be completely ignorant on those issues. And dont even get me started on the idiots that turn right into the left lane without signalling, and then cruse along at 25MPH on the left lane while gabbing on their cellphone, completely oblivious to the line of traffic that has formed behind them thats actually trying to get where they are going.
This is great and can't possibly get to the U.S. fast enough, but what it really needs to have is the feature for reversing the process so people can get out of parking spots (maybe it does, can't view the video on this computer). Any parking spot. I can't count how many times I've seen a driver so damn eager to get on the cell phone as soon as he gets in the car that he can't get out of the parking spot without tying up street traffic or parking lot traffic while driving with one arm and half a brain, 'cause god forbid one should put that stupid phone down and drive.
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Of course not. I'm willing to bet that the lease/sale contract will specifically cover Toyota if there is an accident during park assist. Since the driver still needs to be controlling the speed, via the brake, the driver must be paying attention and is in a position to prevent an accident. Therefore, without a serious system failure (along the lines of any other manufacturing defect), it will still be the driver's fault.
If you have Cruise Control active, and you hit someone, can you claim against that?
No.
Robert Anton Wilson
That is the tricky part there. How do you know how close to the curb you are? If you have a good sense of spatial reasoning, you may have a "feel" for it, but a lot of people don't have that skill. The view shown in your mirrors is misleading. If the curb isn't too tall, you can do it "by feel"... you know you're at the curb when the back right tire pushes up against it. On the other hand, if you are parking next to a wall, that's a good way to scrape up your rear fender.
It's not terribly hard with practice, but it does take some skill and if you're not good at it you risk damaging your car, someone else's car, or pissing people off as they wait to pass while you mess it up and have to try again. That's more stress than many people want to have, so I can see why they might like this device.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Excellent. Another 'convenience' feature which helps out people who are clearly far too STUPID to use a car.
Yes... just like a calculator is another 'convinience' for people who are clearly far too STUPID to do math.