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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.
a tight parking spot You must be joking - you could fit a Hummer in that spot.
Smarter cars will just make dumber drivers.
Now my kids won't need drivers ed, and I'll save a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to....
This has been available for several years now in Japan and other non-US markets. The reason why Toyota didn't release this tech in the US was fear of liability lawsuits in the US' sue-happy culture if something went wrong. Have they changed their stance on this?
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Self-posting stories coming to Slashdot.
This involves the finely-tuned process of randomly selecting an article from two days ago, changing a few words around, and clicking "Submit."
Come to think of it, this has been going on for quite some time now.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
So if this system screws up, mis-calculates the available space and dents a ferrari, is toyota going to pony up?
How soon will there be legal ads on TV asking if you have been injured by a self-parking car?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
But is it smart enough to move itself when it senses the parking enforcement officer approaching with a ticket.
on driving tests to keep the completely brain-dead off the road will be eliminated. I hope examiners will demand that this feature be turned off for testing.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
http://m90.org/index.php?id=13279
Shows a BMW parking itself
The article says that the driver is responsible for controlling the speed of the vehicle via the break pedal. :)
So this really isn't all that much different from someone being run over by your average driver.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
If you can't master this after about three attempts, let's just say I would recommend a nice icepick lobotomy.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
In America, cars parallel park you.
In Soviet Russia, you parallel park cars!
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
Now if these cars would just park themselves far from where they drop me off, we can get rid of street parking in Manhattan. The cars can park themselves outside the city center where parking is plentiful/cheap/free, and we can triple the capacity of our existing streets.
--
make install -not war
What I'm concerned about is what if you accidentally hit the assist switch while driving on the freeway, or if the auto-pilot device could be over-ridden, or hi-jacked, and perhaps you can lose control of your car, from some mischievous kid tampering with your on-board computer system.
Sigs are overrated.
This is all fine and dandy untill it hits a kid. Then who is to blame for it? The driver, the company who make the car or none of the above (which I bet the company will try to claim)?
I like muppets.
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.
Amazingly public transport companies park their vehicles outside the city as well. Not many bus depots in the city centers.
Oh and taxi's also serve a similar function. I believe they paint them yellow over there instead of the normal black that civilized people use.
While your idea sounds nice it has just one small drawback. If you equip every car with it you have just doubled the traffic in and out of the city center. Your car driving you to your work and then driving itself out to a parking lot. The last thing busy cities need is more traffic.
Oh and an other version of truly "self parking" cars? Getting a ride with a co-worker. Drops me off in front of the office. All it costs is to make two cups of coffee.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you can't master this after about three attempts, let's just say I would recommend a nice icepick lobotomy.
And after three attempts, the guy waiting behind you might just be ready & willing.
Tight spot or not, Shaolin training is the answer to your problems: just watch the last 10 seconds of the trailer here and learn! ;-)
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
"That's a four ton truck, Tyrone, how could you not see it?"
"It was at a funny angle!"
"It's behind you. Things tend to come up from behind you when you're reversing."
admittedly, this quote probably isn't perfect.
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!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
And you still have'nt pulled into the cruising lane?
You could be doing Mach 3 and there would still be some "I'm more important" assmunch following at a range of eight feet with their "mall parking lot searchlight" highbeams pulling 500 amps from the backup battery.
I don't get within 50 yards of the asshole lane. I'd rather not sail over a flood control channel with Captain SUV and four other cars in a fireball that would be visible from 30,000 feet. Thanks.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
What is the point of having sensors and computers when it is so easy in my beat-up Toyota? Just back up until you feel a slight jolt from the car behind, or the alarm goes off, then pull forward a few inches.
I stole this
Sorry I had to answer this one.
As do millions of Americans, it's just you were at the biggest tourist trap in the world so of course every yahoo with a trailer hitch and an airstream was there. Check out any major or even minor city people do it everyday and some of them are actually good at it.
sorry I hate when some one from another country comes and sees the smallest slice of life and starts generalizing about the whole country.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I think you are thinking of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car. There are some videos of it here at the American Master's site, but not of it parking. Though there is one of it pulling a tight U-turn around a police officer. I do think this is the same car I saw a video of where the car came in at an angle and then turned it's rear wheel and eased it's back in to parallel park. There is a bit more info on wikipedia too. (also here and here)