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Building the Zero-Fatality Car
CWmike writes "In the future, new cars might include an appealing sticker: 'This car is rated for zero fatalities.' John Brandon reports that Volvo, for instance, has launched a program called Vision 2020, which states, 'By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.' It includes not just new protective measures in the car, but technology for communicating dangers to and from the car. Other car companies have similar, less formalized programs. As ambitious as it seems, Ed Kim, an analyst at automotive research firm AutoPacific, says the zero-fatality goal is achievable. In the next 10 years, there will be a confluence of safety technologies — such as road-sign recognition, pedestrian detection and autonomous car controls — that lead to safer cars, says Kim. Will your next car look something like this?"
I need a car metaphor.
Go go gadget Car-From-Demolition Man!
Living With a Nerd
Come talk to me when they figure out the "zero fatality life."
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Zero is a figment of your imagination. You can only ever approach it, more and more expensively.
By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo
But what about those outside the Volvo?
They can use some of the same technology as was utilized on this motorcycle:
http://biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=21816
I'm really interested in the promise of an automated car that you don't have to get a license for or actually drive. They would be inherently safer, even taking failures into consideration. Of course, this will never fly (in America, at least) because we have this mentality that we need to be actively behind the wheel of a six ton three-story tall truck with twelve wheels, wider than two lanes of traffic, with a pair of truck-nuts dangling off the back. To pick our snot-nosed kids up from the grade school.
The zero-fatality car is stationary and has no passenger or pilot space.
WARNING: You are exceeding the speed-limit by 5 mph, we will alert the authorities...
WARNING: Your car is overdue for it's monthly maintenance check and will not start after august 1.
WARNING: You took that corner too fast for current conditions, we have alerted the authorities.
WARNING: Your car has exceeded it's 5 year life span and has been terminated. Please contact your dealer for a great deal on a new one.
The way to achieve perfect security for a computer is unplug it from the network, and never turn it on. I guess the only way to prevent anyone from ever dying in a new Volvo is to prevent them from entering it...
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Think of the military applications! The Army should start putting every soldier in a new Volvo. You can shoot at them, you can bomb them, you can even throw tactical nukes at them...but they keep coming!
Should we be worried about the coming Swedish blitzkrieg?
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
'By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.'
By 2020, nobody may be able to afford a new Volvo, so we'll keep driving the 20 year old deathtrap ones.
As much as Id like to believe all these new and wonderful technologies, I wouldn't underestimate the ability of human beings to inflict a grevious harm on themeselves in the most creative ways. You may have the zero-fatality car but the guy plowing into you head first might not and the result would most likely be just as fatal. OTOH, every bit of safety counts.
My car hasn't killed anyone yet either, meaning it too is a zero-fatality car. And I'll get a new one, if it does. Also how much are these cars going to cost for this improvement in safety? I'd rather occasionally kill people with my car slightly more often than pay a huge amount extra for a minuscule safety improvement. More important, the insurance costs on my car (a 92 Honda Civic BTW) are pretty low (around $50 a month in insurance). That's a concrete measure that indicates I already don't have much risk associated with the vehicle.
The problem is that safety costs money. There's the materials involved, which aren't cheap. There's the engineering, which isn't (or shouldn't be) cheap. There's the electronics, which are getting cheaper. There's the redundancy, which isn't cheap. People don't like saving their own lives when it costs money or time to do so.
That said, I sincerely hope this takes off, and that by some miracle of economics it's affordable. We have the technology...
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
...a semi truck falls off of an overpass and lands on top of one?
...a semi truck going 200mph the other direction crosses the median?
...a semi truck going 200mph on the other road runs a red light?
...that logging truck in front of you loses its cargo?
...that banana truck in front of you loses its cargo, and sends you through the guardrail?
...you run out of gas while crossing the train tracks?
...some idiot leaves their kids in one with windows up for "just a couple minutes" during the middle of summer?
...someone decides to carjack you?
. Please heed this advise kids before its to late, and you make an ass of your self.
Is that something like the unsinkable Titanic?
Volvo has just been bought by Geely, a chinese firm.
Sure the chinese have promised to keep volvo volvo, not to mess with the whole swedish safety stuff, but what car brand has ever been taken over and NOT changed significantly towards the new parent company? Hell, all current volvos sit on Ford chassis.
Good luck making a zero fatality car with the chinese at the helm...
People, what a bunch of bastards
Car: Your ex-husband has a gun. He seems agitated. ...Solution calculated. Please exit the vehicle.
Car: His blood pressure is rising, and his pupils are dilated.
Car: Considering prime directive of zero fatalities in a new Volvo...
Car:
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Great concept, but there are some rather glaring problems.
Let's take the "Pedestrian detection with auto brake" feature for example:
http://www.volvocars.com/intl/top/about/corporate/volvo-sustainability/safety/pages/pedestrian-detection-with-full-auto-brake.aspx
Lovely in theory, except for all the moronic teens who will delight in jumping out in front of Volvos confident that the car can't hit them. You're going to have idiot kids hit by drivers of old style cars, as well as a whole bunch of tail end collisions caused by this. It'd render roads near schools undrivable at closing time.
Oh, and you have to love the fact that they're adding a warning light that flashes when it sees a problem. Which seems to miss the fact that the warning light itself is going to immediately distract you, and make it more likely that you're not going to see the pedestrian it's trying to warn you of.
While backed by the best of intentions, I just can't see this becoming reality for a long while.
So we'll cocoon ourselves in masses of materials designed to make us safe? You can talk about light materials but the overall trend is the opposite. Cars used to be under 2000 pounds and now they are 3500+ pounds, even with the materials technology gains we've had. Weight is the number one factor in determining fuel mileage. So we may avoid crashes, but then we will die from air pollution and other environmental footprint due to cars. We will feel safe driving air conditioned cars through globally-warmed deserts. Until gas is $30 per gallon, people (Americans especially) will slurp gas like there's no tomorrow.
Birth is the leading cause of death.
until they can stop your organs from slamming into your rib cage there will always be auto fatalities.
lose != loose
Please heed this advise kids before its to late, and you make an ass of your self.
For instance, by failing to correctly spell common English words generally taught at the 4th grade level while condescendingly lecturing others.
Ditto for mis-punctuation and general poor communications skill.
But kudos for violating the long-standing Slashdot taboo against reading the article.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Yes, "zero" is not feasible on an open road where other people can drive cars that don't prevent them from doing stupid things.
However, smarts that decrease the risk of being involved in an accident and which decrease the speed and increase control during an accident go a long way to reducing not only fatalities but injuries.
Mechanical safety features like stability control, rollover and cabin-crush-in prevention, improved air bags and seat belts, and other features increase survivability.
So, can we ever get to zero fatalities and still drive on roads where other drivers have non-computer-controlled cars? No. Can we have a car that's a lot safer? Yes. Will we be able to afford it? That's the real question.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...a semi truck falls off of an overpass and lands on top of one? - car won't drive under bridges
...a semi truck going 200mph the other direction crosses the median? - car accelerates to 201MPH, in reverse
...a semi truck going 200mph on the other road runs a red light? - see above
...that logging truck in front of you loses its cargo? - car grows wings, flies over obstruction
...that banana truck in front of you loses its cargo, and sends you through the guardrail? - ejector seat, you're no longer in the car if you die
...you run out of gas while crossing the train tracks? - ejector seat again
...some idiot leaves their kids in one with windows up for "just a couple minutes" during the middle of summer? - warranty only applies to owner
...someone decides to carjack you? - car only comes with pink paintwork, no-one would want to steal that.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
How about we stop giving driver's licenses to anyone who can manage to stand up? Make them more difficult to get, and remove drivers from the road when they become unsafe.
I know, what a concept, right?
I bet if the drivers on the road were better tested and more competent, the rate of serious injuries and fatailities might not get to zero, but it'd be way closer than it is now.
"What's that clicking? Oh my left blinker's on. Wonder how long that's been on for. I got in the left lane doing less than the speed limit only a few minutes ago, so it must have been then."
Invent a car that teleports instead of drives on the road. Or better yet. just invent the teleporter.
insert funny sig here
Actually, I'm under the impression that some of the bleeding obvious warning have little to do with "nature designing a bigger idiot" as with basically a law system where people can pretend to be idiots to sue for millions. And where juries of disgruntled anti-corporatist can actually decide to award an idiot that a company pays his medical bill, even when essentially ruling that the idiot is to blame for his own misfortune. Just because, you know, it would be somehow mean to tell a little old lady to pay for her own skin graft, when you can just take some money from a corporation to cover those costs.
E.g., "Wanda Hudson, 44, of Mobile, Ala. After Hudson lost her home to foreclosure, she moved her belongings to a storage unit. She says she was inside her unit one night "looking for some papers" when the storage yard manager found the door to her unit ajar -- and locked it. She denies that she was sleeping inside, but incredibly did not call for help or bang on the door to be let out! She was not found for 63 days and barely survived; the formerly "plump" 150-pound woman lived on food she just happened to have in the unit, and was a mere 83 pounds when she was found. She sued the storage yard for $10 million claiming negligence. Even though the jury was not allowed to learn that Hudson had previously diagnosed mental problems, it found Hudson was nearly 100 percent responsible for her own predicament -- but still awarded her $100,000."
Source: http://www.stellaawards.com/2003.html
Roll that around in your head. Even after ruling her responsible, they _still_ awarded her $100,000. God knows what for. Apparently just because it would be heartless _not_ to rob a company to pay for a trespasser's misfortune.
More worryingly, even warning signs really don't matter any more.
E.g., "Hornbeck volunteered for the Army and served a stint in Iraq. After getting home, he got drunk, wandered into a hotel's service area (passing "DANGER" warning signs), crawled into an air conditioning unit, and was severely cut when the machinery activated. Unable to care for himself due to his drunkenness, he bled to death. A tragedy, to be sure, but one solely caused by a supposedly responsible adult with military training. Despite his irresponsible behavior -- and his perhaps criminal trespassing -- Hornbeck's family sued the hotel for $10 million, as if it's reasonably foreseeable that some drunk fool would ignore warning signs and climb into its heavy duty machinery to sleep off his bender."
Source: http://www.stellaawards.com/2007.html
E.g., a woman sued Burger King after spilling the coffee onto her own lap, because, get this, although the cup did warn that the coffee is hot, the employee didn't also warn her verbally that it's dangerously hot. Because, you know, apparently otherwise it doesn't matter.
Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/806345/posts
Worse yet, in some parts you can even get to pay big bucks for something you didn't personally cause or had any way to cause or prevent.
E.g., when a hare-brained pyrotechnics stunt went wrong in a bar and resulted in a deadly blaze, it wasn't just the owners that had to pay. The list of those who were made to pay millions or had to reach a settlement (again in the millions), included the radio channel which aired an ad for the event, and the manufacturer of the beer they served there (and literally had no other involvement with the event, and likely only heard of it when they got sued), and the importer of that beer, and Home Depot who sold the material they used as insulation and which was ignited by their hare-brained pyrotechnics. (Although Home Depot never sold it as fire-proof or anything.)
Source, for example: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-13-540
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Unfortunately they tend to remove others... Like the one who used to signal a lane change (without looking), wait 5 seconds, and change lane (again, without looking). Never had an accident, but probably ignored a trail of accidents in the (unused) rear-view mirror.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Subways and trains already transport millions of people with basically no accidents. 100% electric. You don't have to drive. You can read a book and talk on the phone at the same time, while travelling. Their speeds can beat cars easily, and completely safely. They just need more of them. In Tokyo, NYC, and many other cities, you dont really need a car. In spite of all the lobbying the car industry did, to remove all public transportation in almost all cities, unfortunately to great success.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/