Slashdot Mirror
New Smartphone Tech To Alert Pedestrians: 'You Are About To Be Hit By a Car'
cartechboy writes "Usually, smartphones are a problem for humans transporting themselves — a massive distraction. But Honda is working on a way to use smartphones to protect pedestrians from bad drivers. The 'V2P' (Vehicle-to-Pedestrian) tech uses a smartphone's GPS and dedicated short range communications (DSRC) to warn drivers when a pedestrian say, steps out from behind a parked car. So the driver sees a dashboard message warning of an approaching pedestrian (which also notes whether said walker is using phone, texting or listening to music — which sort of shouldn't matter as you, uhm, brake.) The lucky pedestrian gets an alert on their phone telling them there's a DSRC-equipped car coming – that's if, say, actually looking at the road isn't telling you that already."
The lesson here is to always keep your eyes on your smartphone when you're crossing the street. If you get an alert, stop where you are and read it! Relatedly, there's another phone app in development to help you avoid gunfire.
"You will not win the lottery!"
"Whoa! Good thing you warned me, phone, I was about to buy a ticket ... um ... this is one of those Catch 22s isn't it?"
"HA HA HA!"
"Damn."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You were hit by a car......30 seconds ago.
"You are about to be hit by a"*BANG*!
When one of there driver less cars hit's some one they use some like this to say it's the person who get hit's fault.
The point is that it's something with minor utility right now (great utility in niche areas, like alerting blind users where cars are and how fast they're travelling).
Beyond this, having little devices that warn self driving cars where people are sounds pretty useful.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So, all those movies with Aliens coming to earth to steal our water is ... probably not true? Say it isn't so!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Will it display said pedestrian's point value?
"...Good!"
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Instead just install an app the declares "LOOK OUT DIPSHIT!" and random intervals when your phone is out of your pocket.
Warning, this txt message will self destruct in 5...4...3...2...
reversing bad moderation
new sig
A similar technique could be used to avoid muggings. A user would download the MugMe app, and a DSRC equipped mugger would detect that you were near - instead of having to physically assault you, he would simply input the percentage of cash on hand you have that is to be debited to his account, and a pre-paid mailing box would be sent to your home wherein you could deposit your belongings on return. It would avoid ruining a night out and physical contact with the lower classes.
You might wonder how well adoption would fare; obviously the state would make installation of the app mandatory for cell phone users and declare physical mugging illegal. To get a mugger DSRC you could employ a system much like taxi medallions, where a would-be mugger had to buy a medallion in order to have the right to mug citizens. This would also have the benefit of capping the amount of crime in a city to a well-regulated value.
Later iterations of the app could add an improvement like the "Aid Other" feature, if someone near was being mugged other users in the area would be alerted and could chose either to "come to aid" in which case there would be a percentage chance the mugger would be virtually "scared" and get nothing. The other option would be "look away furtively" which would confer a one-day pass of freedom from mugging.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you switch to the reverse mode, will it act like a guidance system for the killer car?
Ezekiel 23:20
I'll finish this comment right after I check the message I just got on my ph
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
Here's a crazy idea.... How about letting the pedestrian take responsibility for stepping into a busy road without looking first? ...actually you'd think it would be a self-rectifying problem through natural selection.
on your phone you get hit by that car unless you are REALLY fast and jump out of the way.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
How long before the first lawsuit because someone's phone didn't warn them in time?
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Meanwhile Google's answer is to embed NFC chips in the bumpers of all cars, so that you can be told you were hit exactly at the moment of impact.
Truly a technically superior solution, and finally a use for those NFC readers they keep shipping.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You don't "protect" the pedestrian by telling the bad driver to activate his brakes. Instead, automatically activate the brakes, take the bad driver out of the loop.
This is similar to my gripe about people who think that a horn is a useful safety device -- as if the guy who you are beeping at is going to listen the horn, figure out that it applies to him, and figure out what he is doing wrong, fast enough to make a difference. Better to simply assume that he's an idiot, and work around him.
In Indian Roads you will get a million alert messages per second... and it doesnt matter if you are pedestrian or the driver!
i wonder if the technology is based on the 'silver-haired bat'?
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
You were hit by a car......30 seconds ago.
On the Android phone - You are about to be hit by a Google mapping car! Massive pr0ps!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't think GPS is accurate enough for this. When using my phone for driving directions it routinely has difficulty telling if I'm on the highway or access road next to it.
"You have gone through the guardrail, knucklehead, stop looking at your phone while driving"
Hey, these really are smart phones!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://xkcd.com/723/
"Told you!"
On Facebook? or maybe tweet about the impending event
On the iPhone, it only works if you're about to be hit by a Prius. Well, at first. Rest assured it'll keep a database of whatever's the trendiest city car of the time, updated hourly, so you'll be the first to know when you're about to be hit by the most popular and prettiest in vehicle technology!
Google will come up with a web API for it for Android phones, but nobody will implement it. So they'll make their own car that's compatible with it, but only market it for developers. Three months later, they'll come up with a better idea that depends on the oncoming car having wifi turned on, so they'll scrap all their cars and go with that. Three months later, it'll be NFC. Then Bluetooth. Then a crazy idea involving HDMI...
Windows phones would just throw themselves in front of cars in the hopes they can be put out of their misery, but that doesn't work very well if the phone's safely packed in a nice box alongside its millions of unsold brethren in the backrooms of cell phone shops. Maybe someone will crash into the back of the building and give them hope.
http://xkcd.com/937/
splat
>"But Honda is working on a way to use smartphones to protect pedestrians from bad drivers"
Bad *drivers*???
Um, no. How about idiot pedestrians who walk into the road without looking because they are too busy with their damn phones.
Because the pedestrian should be allowed to step out into traffic from behind a parked car?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Perhaps would be better to teach people to be alert when walking, pay attention to their environment and most important, don't licence imbeciles to control equipment that could kill a pedestrian! Technology is being used to make the largest percentage of the population even dumber than they are already.
Is this April 1st? The GPS is imprecise, phones won't both have this, wont be fast enough, etc etc. I doubt this works. Seems like a publicity vaporware stunt.
"a way to use smartphones to protect pedestrians from bad drivers."
More like protect good drivers from bad pedestrians. It always amuses me to see how many people will walk into a street without ever looking for traffic. They just assume a crosswalk provides them some sort of magical protection from the 3,000 lb dragons.
But on a serious note. I am seeing way to many hairbrain schemes where drivers attention on the road is drawn to a screen where graphical information about potential dangers is displayed.
I am willing to put money on it that in every single case the results of the distraction causes more harm then it prevents.
How the hell can people be banned from using a mobile phone in a car but it is perfectly fine to use Satnav, radio or a gazillion new doodads. Each of them far more distracting then a conversation on the phone.
I while back I even saw an IPad application that uses the camera to interpret the car's dashboard ( http://www.gizmag.com/audi-a3-augmented-reality-manual/28693/ )
Madness.
I love how most of the comments so far expound upon how bad more information is. Oh no, issuing a warning beep when a collision is predicted is a bad thing because [pedestrians that stupid deserve to die, a warning will cause the crash, this will never work because of some technical issue]. I've seen plenty of CCTV footage of people messing with a phone walking into a fountain, a wall, or otherwise harming themselves. I'm not sure how a warning is a bad thing. But nobody here seems willing to indicate that a warning beep on collision detection is a good thing.
Why?
Learn to love Alaska
No, they need to play irritating music with a DO YOU WANT THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE DISPLAYED? By the time they figure out how to dismiss it their genes will be out of the pool.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
We would have called 911 automatically, but Samsung patented that technology. Instead we automatically tweeted for you,"Help! I've been run over by a car."
God spoke to me
...from behind a car stopped in traffic. I never saw him, and and he never looked my way. I was traveling about 30 mph, and later reconstruction of the incident by the county sheriff's office (used in my defense during the civil court case) showed that there was probably less than 2 seconds between when he stepped out and when I hit him. I seriously doubt this app would have helped him or anyone else in a similar situation.
BTW, he was issued a ticket in the hospital for "failure to yield right of way to motor vehicle." Never knew there was such a law, and it certainly helped in my defense. (Needless to say, the insurance company paid anyway because it was cheaper than going to court.)
which sort of shouldn't matter as you, uhm, brake
It does matter. Because if some asshole is texting I will not be braking but accelerating.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
-1, Wanton cruelty to English language.
Tho'se apo'strophe's, their crying!
Like most cruel crimes are perpetrated by people close to victims, this mauling's certainly a native speaker's deed.
Thanks for the giggle, just wondering what a Z10 will do under the same circumstances? Call 911 for you? If connected to a remote bluetooth heart monitor, inform relatives, update your facebook status, setup a reading of your will, and call an funeral parlor, do a sell off e-trade of all your holdings and add any profits to your portfolio account, the phone itself will automatically list itself on e-bay and wipe all personal data at the moment all transactions have been completed after your heart stops? Those with mods mod parent up please!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
With smart enough servers, this could even be done by text message. And that text message could be a simple four-letter word: "Stay"
Posting anonymously because I know about the Machine, obviously.
Honda better have a feature to turn off app while in Chicago to avoid frequency overload
that is what in the cars EULA so your on your own.
Nickelback fans beware!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
We usually blame the victim when someone runs into a pedestrian.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
In the course of the evolution of the homosapien, it's time for a huge asteroid to come wipe us out, and let nature start all over again. If we really need a phone app, or a computer program on the vehicle, to warn us of the other, then we are screwed! Yeah, I see people driving during the day, about as attentive as a 2 year old with a toy, thinking that driving is the 3rd or 4th most important thing they are doing, and, I also see people with their stupid phone, ear buds jammed in the ears 24/7, without a care in the world stepping out in traffic. Darwin can only fend off so many before he even gets tired of it. Perhaps its time, to coin a phrase from "War Games" and just give up, and let nature start all over again.
It will be a great help while I am on the way to the hospital to find out that I was just struck by a vehicle. Nice to see T-Mobile will be there to clue me in as to what happened after the fact, since my texts often arrive too late to function as an effective preventive measure.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Passing the buck again and making no one responsible for being a dumb ass. Yes bad drivers exist and yes none observant pedestrians exist but I don't think we need to use technology to protect these people. If you're going to be walking around in a traffic populated area and not pay attention then don't complain when you get hit. In the same right if you're in a car and you are in an area where there is high pedestrian traffic then pay attention and drive slow. It shouldn't be the phones problem to warm idiots that there own stupidity is about to get them in trouble. After all with a system like this what will end up happening is that the system will start getting blamed when it doesn't work rather then the idiots being blamed for being the problem in the first place.
So you start to cross the street and get a message on your phone. Now you're distracted, you look at your phone, and it says: "congratz you're dead". Instead of looking at the road, you are reading some message about the car that just hit you. Ideally people would respond to the car rather than the phone. But then again, ideally people wouldn't drive off a cliff just because gps said to turn right.
Damn, too late.
You could just slip the phone into your pocket for five damn seconds
It looks like you're about to be hit by a car...
_
/ \
| |
@ @
|| ||
|| ||
|\_/|
\___/
(Sorry I couldn't warn you in time; network delays, you know.)
Use those 2 ultra high def video processors in the front of your face, idiots. I await the coming lawsuits from people who were hit by a car without being warned by their phone in earnest.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
So if a person is about to step out from behind a parked car and the driver is actually paying attention to the road, send him an alert to the dashboard which makes him briefly take his eyes off the road to read a message? Seriously?
The car is like a predator on the hunt. The inattentive smartphone user is like an oblivious gazelle. Suddenly the car pounces! One less oblivious gazelle on the savannah.
Eventually, selection pressure will weed out the oblivious gazelles, leaving only the alert ones.
Nature is both terrible and beautiful.
Isn't this just going to be used for localized spamming?
"I notice you are near my Samsung retail outlet, you should upgrade that iphone to something awesome"
You'll never see that message. The phone will be stolen before that.
Where can I get the app to alert me; if there's a need to evacuate the building? Specifically.... if there's a fire in the crowded theatre; I want an app to alert me immediately, so I can scramble for the door, and get out first: trampling anyone who dare stand in my way.
In the Netherlands it is always the car-driver's fault if he hits a pedestrian or a cyclist.
If he can't see a pedestrian coming from behind a parked car stepping into the street he should have anticipated that and drive slower if the visibility is preventing this.
There are some exceptions, like on a highway where pedestrians aren't allowed, but in most cases it is going to be difficult to proof that the car driver was not at fault.
Can we please stop doing things to save people not worth saving? This is in the same class as putting warning labels on Lawn Mowers that you shouldn't pick them up and try to use them as hedge trimmers, or warning labels on cans of RAID bug spray. If you aren't smart enough to avoid these issues, you're just a drain.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"That is NOT just a flesh wound." is about to become the dominate thought in your brain.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
"The lesson here is to always keep your eyes on your smartphone when you're crossing the street."
Is this meant to be a joke?
In the Netherlands it is always the car-driver's fault if he hits a pedestrian or a cyclist.
Even if the cyclist runs a red light?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
The way this'd be really handy for a driver, is if they head a decent HUD on their windscreen, which could highlight pedestrians *through* a parked van. Of course, we would need better GPS, a better HUD, some head tracking, and a few other bits and bobs...
I'm holding out for the app to help me avoid huge ships.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Of course - a driver should never assume anything.
Spoken like someone who has no clue what he's talking about. Why should a driver be held responsible for a cyclist running a red? Especially if he has no time to react (a very real possibility). And don't say the driver should slow down, as that can easily create more problems than it solves; it can even be dangerous to slow down depending on conditions and traffic flow.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
to human problems. If someone is so intent on reading the latest message or just has to surf the web while walking, it's their fault if they step into traffic.
All this technology does is increase the amount of things which can go wrong/give false positives, thus increasing the likelihood that the driver will take evasive action when none is needed or will not be notified because the software decided not to work.
Survival of the fittest. Let enough people get run over and the problem will solve itself.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Anyone crossing the road from behind a parked car whilst using a smartphone, fiddling with a music player or otherwise not paying total attention to the large, fast moving, multi ton objects hurtling along the road deserves to get run over.
They really do.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !