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KIA Bringing News & Social Media To Your Car
thecarchik writes "Earlier this week KIA made some major announcements about their future cars. They shed some light on the details of their new UVO system, which lets you answer and place phone calls, send and receive SMS text messages, and access music via voice commands. Moreover, their new widget-based system for the on-screen controls lets you include RSS news, financial information, and weather reports, along with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn updates. If there is one thing we can take away from this and Ford's recent announcement about the MyFord Touch system, it is that we'll see some heated internet technology battles between car manufacturers."
The NY Times pointed out a few days ago that many companies are already turning their attention to dashboard computing, much to the dismay of those who warn against distracted driving.
"I kan has kar rek"?
I think an "infotainment" system for the car is fine for passengers, but if it tempts drivers to take their eyes off the road, it should be accompanied by a collision avoidance system that counteracts the increased distractability factor.
I think Volvo points the way with their low velocity laser/radar collision avoidance system (18 MPH). However I would like to see universal adoption of a high speed system that would at least make collisions more survivable, if not prevent them entirely.
With about 38,000 people dying on the road every year in the U.S. alone, it's unfathomable that our leaders (and the voters) pay so little attention to collision survivability. For a while back in the '70s, they were forcing car makers to increase the force absorption ability of bumpers every few years. It got up to 5 mph, but then in the '80s, with high fuel prices and a deep recession, the standards were relaxed down to 2.5 mph to encourage more profits.
The technology today is light years beyond what we had in the '70s. We could put RF chips in the major roads (buried, or on the railings, or whatever) to help cars stay in their lanes, we could mandate Volvo-style (and airplane-style) collision avoidance systems that would automatically swerve cars out of collision paths, and we could probably increase the shock absorption abilities of passenger vehicles. It costs money, to be sure, but we should ask ourselves, would we rather pay an extra $500 a year in taxes or an extra $100 a month in car payments and live, or be wealthier and dead (or paraplegic or quadraplegic or whiplashed)?
We went to war over 3000 deaths on 9/11, yet we consider the 3000 deaths per month on the road as a normal hazard of our transportation system. Let's take off the blinders and fix this problem already.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
It's been shown in several studies that car kits are not much less unsafe than using a moblie phone while driving. Introducing even more communication equipment in cars will only lead to more deaths. And do you really need to follow Twitter while you drive? I think it would be a good idea to forbid cars with this kind of equipment on board, or make the equipment stop working while the car is driving.
-- Cheers!
"You can have my driver dashboard computing when you pry it from my cold dead haCRASH!!!"
A lot of places have rules about displays not being visible from the drivers' position.
Then there's the legal liability to the manufacturers when a pedestrian gets killed. *THEY* never agreed to any EULA.
And insurance companies, who will now raise premiums (it's what they do, you know).
I think I'll take the bus instead.
With about 38,000 people dying on the road every year in the U.S. alone, it's unfathomable that our leaders (and the voters) pay so little attention to collision survivability.
And Millions more die from preventable diseases - like heart disease from obese or from smoking. 38,000 is nothing.
We Americans need to grow up and take responsibility for own actions instead of having momma Government take care of us.
Scratch that. We Americans are too fucking stupid and lazy to take care of ourselves.
We need more Government regulations! When the fuck is the Government guy going to come over and wipe my ass and change my underwear?! I'm starting to smell here!
I have been hit by a car as a pedestrian by a distracted motorist that was admittedly texting while driving - thankfully I was not killed. We are going to allow even more temptation to multitask behind the wheel? These things should be backseat only or banned completely. We crack down hard on DUI/DWI but this trend has the potential to be just as onerous.
A touch-screen in a car, at least for the driver, is a terrible idea. It can't be operated by feel; the driver has to look away from the road, and probably for more than a second. Not good. Twittering while driving? Please. "Fully Loaded", a Bruce McCall drawing, isn't a design goal.
Auto designers, desperately trying to get margins up with "more car per car" (an old GM slogan) are hanging on unneeded features that are cheap to install. Overpriced car stereos aren't enough any more. Giant hood ornaments are out (there's a "pedestrian impalement" test cars have to pass, in response to a period in the 1950s when auto hoods were weaponized). So now we have dashboard gimmicks.
In aviation, this is called the "head-down time" problem, and efforts are made to minimize head-down time. The military takes this to an extreme in fighters, with the HOTAS ("Hands On Throttle and Stick") concept. This leads to a proliferation of buttons on the throttle and stick, though. Aviation people think hard about how many seconds of head-down time it takes to do something.
If you want to cause accidents, put in a touch screen that's stateful, so the driver has to look. Then give it a timeout, so it goes back to the ground state if the driver doesn't give it undivided attention. This forces the driver to look away from the road. One of the examples in the original article looks very like that.
That doesn't make any god damn sense at all.
If you're spending an hour a day in your car, you need to spend that DRIVING, not fucking around on the internet.
If you're traveling at highway speeds, you're a menace to society if you're distracted. If you're stuck in stop-and-go traffic, you're just going to make the gridlock worse if you miss either the gos or the stops.
I don't understand how people can fuck around while driving a car. When I drive, the radio is low, my phone doesn't get answered, I'm not eating, putting on makeup, texting, shaving, or doing any sort of stupid shit. I think that's part of the reason I haven't ever had an accident or a ticket.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor