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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.
>"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.
"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.