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.

Comments

I can see it now.

[DougOtto]

How long before the first lawsuit because someone's phone didn't warn them in time?

Re:Protecting pedestrians from bad drivers

[jamesh]

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.

That would be kind of cool. Kids would soon figure out that if they run flat towards the road (but stop in time), all sorts of hilarity will follow.

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.

It works great with a lane change. If you see a car starting to change lanes into you because they haven't done their head check then a beep will normally get them to cancel their move. And yes I've been on the bad side of that (young and stupid and "i don't need to check i know there's nothing in my blind spot").