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Ford System Will Warn, Correct Lane-Drifting Drivers
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Ford says its new Fusion, which will debut at the North American International Auto Show in a couple weeks, will be the first mainstream midsize sedan in North America to offer a lane departure system. Lane departure systems are aimed at warning drivers, especially drowsy ones, if their vehicles wander out of their lane. A digital camera mounted on the windshield ahead of the rear-view mirror keeps a watch. The system not only causes the steering wheel to vibrate if it senses an unintentional lane departure, it will also steer the car back into the right lane. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 100,000 police-reported crashes occur every year as a result of drowsy drivers, leading to 1,500 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in monetary losses." I'd just like to know how hard the AI will fight if it misinterprets a driver's intentional lane change.
I wonder if this system could be integrated with parking sensors, to prevent some instances of lane-changing when there's another vehicle in the blind spot.
re: indicators, I welcome anything that even gently enforces their use.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
already has Lane Keep Assist. It doesn't steer me back into the lane, but it does give me an annoying beep when it senses me leaving the lane. Personally, I'd much rather have my car alert me about this stuff and let me control the vehicle rather than have the vehicle do the stuff on its own.
In works zones some times you see lines all over the place will the AI be smart and auto trun off when it sees that?
Also on new pavement you see the temp lines that may not be picked up the AI.
So if I get on the highway can I set my cruise control and take my hands off the wheel?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
In my car, yes, that is the case. Also, the torque applied to the steering wheel to keep you in your lane is pretty minimal; even grandma would have no trouble overpowering the motor to, say, make an emergency lane change to avoid an accident.
Maybe this kind of technology can save a few lives.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
The Prius Lane Keep Assist feature does steer a bit, gently - the wheel tends to drift toward it's best guess of the center of the lane. It won't drive for you, though: if you take your hands off the wheel it notices (I think it notices the absence of any applied torque over some reasonably short interval), sounds an alarm and turns off the feature.
Legal CYA. In nominal conditions, it's been possible to build a lane-feedback PID steer-er for a long time. But if it did continue to steer you under automatic control, any accident you're involved in someone will try to sue Ford claiming it's their fault their system steered you into an accident. Because true or not Ford has much deeper pockets than your insurance policy...
Normally a drunk or drowsy person would run off the road and either be jolted awake by the rumble strips or hit a tree/guardrail/ditch/etc. It sounds morbid, but they are the only ones injured or killed.
This new system defeats the purpose of the rumble strips by preventing your from getting to them and keeps you on the road until you hit someone else. It turns a dangerous, incapacitated driver's vehicle into a guided missile. This is a very bad thing. I'm not at all convinced the a vibrating steering wheel will wake them up... Rumble strips violently rock the whole car and make a loud, disturbing noise.
Yes and no. The problem is, in modern North American society, it's pretty much impossible to have a decent job and life without being able to own and operate your own car; all the infrastructure is set up that way. Yes, a lot of people survive on public transportation, but it's pretty miserable, taking 3-6 hours a day to get anywhere like here in Phoenix, so only poor people use it, and it really hurts their lives in many ways wasting so much time sitting on a bus. There are a few exceptions like NYC, but most of the country isn't like that.
A better system would be a Personal Rapid Transit system like SkyTran, where you get a small, private car that automatically takes you wherever you want to go, and eliminates the human factor, but that's not going to happen in the USA any time soon as it requires too much investment and wouldn't make any profit for politically-connected corporations like Halliburton and General Dynamics.