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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.
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/
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
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
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!!"
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
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)