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.

Comments

A Tight Spot???

[Wellerite]

a tight parking spot You must be joking - you could fit a Hummer in that spot.

Great...

[Chicane-UK]

Excellent. Another 'convenience' feature which helps out people who are clearly far too STUPID to use a car.

I remeber reading an article recently that put people with high end, well kitted out cars in cars with NO driver aids and subjected them to a few tests such as skid pans and high speed maneuvres(sp?!) - the results were fairly predictable. Most were so used to the features that automatically kicked in when they did something stupid that when faced with a car that didn't have them, they had NO idea what was going on and lost control in all circumstances.

I personally feel that there needs to be more driver education and less dependence on these driver aids! I appreciate they might be important in an accident of course but not all circumstances where driver aids may be used could be classed as accidents!