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KIA Bringing News & Social Media To Your Car

Posted by Soulskill on from the prepare-to-be-run-over-by-a-tweeting-driver dept.

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.

9 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. "LOLZ" by technomom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "I kan has kar rek"?

  2. Make them safer first by yog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Make them safer first by webdog314 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While I agree that making cars safer would be nice, you don't do that by making the car think for you. Anti-lock brakes work because it doesn't matter what the situation is. Locked brakes are never good. But how does a collision avoidance system that "swerves cars out of collision paths" know what direction is the right one? Great, the car swerves you to the right and avoids hitting the truck that just slammed on it's brakes... and drives you right off the side of a cliff. No thanks. If you want to save lives, how about a campaign to DRIVE SLOWER, or increase the testing needed to actually get a license. Give bigger insurance rate cuts to people who haven't had an accident in multiple years, and actually enforce the laws regarding using a phone while driving. Save the high tech for your living room. When you're in your car, DRIVE.

      And as bad as 3000 deaths a month sounds, the part of that sample you don't mention are the number of people who go from point A to point B each day unscathed. Looked at that way, cars seem downright safe compared to say, being shot at in Afghanistan.

    2. Re:Make them safer first by Corwyn_123 · · Score: 3, Informative

      To consider that the laws are for our own personal safety at our own hands is a very single minded concept.

      It's not a matter of your own safety at your own hands that's the issue, the issue is the safety of everyone else around you. Passengers in your car do opt to rely on you for their safety. Other drivers on the road, and pedestrians do not opt to rely on you for their safety.

      It's all of our responsibility to watch the road and be mindful of everyone else. That's what the laws are designed for, not you, but the others you can harm but your negligence.

      It is the responsibility of the lawmakers, for right or wrong, to keep everyone else safe, due to the lack of people's ability or desire to consider those around them.
      --

      "The way I see it... If you need both of your hands for whatever it is you're doing, then your brain should probably be in on it too" - Ellen DeGeneres

  3. Dismay of those warning against distractions? by sznupi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How about dismay of those who don't want gimmicks? Those who want primarily...a car. With resources going into its reliability, low fuel consumption and safety?

    Yes, "one doesn't exclude the other". But effort described in TFS as at best misplaced in case of cars. There is no place for doing anything else for driver than paying attention on the road, perhaps with some background music or telephone via hands-free and voice control - and that's almost covered, not by car manufacturers. If passengers want something more - it doesn't have to built into the car.

    --
    One that hath name thou can not otter
  4. Ridiculous by tsa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!

  5. What Charlton Heston would say by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    many companies are already turning their attention to dashboard computing, much to the dismay of those who warn against distracted driving.

    "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.

  6. I don't know about the rest of ye but.. by ickleberry · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd rather have an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom with the bare minimum of gadgets and gimmicks than some driverless luxobarge with built-in twitter support.

    Modern cars isolate the driver from the road far too much. Soundproofing and power everything makes it easy to forget you are doing 100mph in a large lump of metal.

    There is if course also the issue of Twitter and Facebook being long dead (hopefully) before the car reaches half it's expected lifetime.

    Of course i have nothing really against driverless cars and people who have no interest in driving a car shouldn't have to, as long as I can still get on the same roads with a completely manual car

  7. Too much head-down time by Animats · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.