‘The Volvo S60, which launches next year, is planned to be the first car to be fitted with full automatic braking to avoid collisions with pedestrians. The system uses a combined camera and radar sensor to monitor any obstacle in front of the car. The radar measures how far away it is, while images from the camera are analysed by image-recognition software to determine what the object is.
Drivers get an audible and visual warning of a potential collision, and if they do not respond the system automatically applies the brakes.’
Read the full story here. It’s below the main article which talks about future safety devices that don’t, imo, sound too good being legislated because us evil car drivers don’t care about pedestrians. Just the title gives the clue.
Anyway the story I found interesting talks about the car automatically and on the foresight of the programmer activating the brakes on a car when you do not react. Sounds very dodgy to me. Remember it will be the only car on the road with this capability.
So you are driving down a road at 50mph followed by a HGV or Coach. It’s raining. Nothing on the road for over a mile and you are on a gentle downwards curve. A recyclable and reusable bag is blown out into the road. Currently you would evaluate the situation, take your foot off the accelerator and decide that the bag will be blown clear it and anyway it’s too dangerous to brake hard in these conditions so you don’t. The bag is blown clear and everything is OK. A blip in any journey.
Not however if your car suddenly decides to apply the brakes on it’s own. With only 10m range at 50, which isn’t even the max speed possible in our emasculated society, that is practically an emergency stop. With no real warming. You could slip on the road or be run over by the vehicle behind. Who’s fault would that be? Well in the first instance yours for going too fast and in the second it’ll be OK as it’s the following vehicle. Hope that makes you feel better in hospital. If you live that is.
I can think of several scenarious where this could create problems and not just for other drivers.
Now I like computers and I do believe that the time will come where computers will be able to manage the intricacies of driving but I’m not so sure about this. Sounds too dangerous to me. I’ll stick with a buzzer thanks.
One last point. I’ve heard that people slam on the brakes so that people run into the back of them at slow speeds so they can claim for whiplash. The person behind always gets the blame unless that person is plod. ‘The car did it’ probably won’t cut it I would think.
This sounds an interesting ‘safety feature’
‘The Volvo S60, which launches next year, is planned to be the first car to be fitted with full automatic braking to avoid collisions with pedestrians. The system uses a combined camera and radar sensor to monitor any obstacle in front of the car. The radar measures how far away it is, while images from the camera are analysed by image-recognition software to determine what the object is.
Drivers get an audible and visual warning of a potential collision, and if they do not respond the system automatically applies the brakes.’
Read the full story here. It’s below the main article which talks about future safety devices that don’t, imo, sound too good being legislated because us evil car drivers don’t care about pedestrians. Just the title gives the clue.
Anyway the story I found interesting talks about the car automatically and on the foresight of the programmer activating the brakes on a car when you do not react. Sounds very dodgy to me. Remember it will be the only car on the road with this capability.
So you are driving down a road at 50mph followed by a HGV or Coach. It’s raining. Nothing on the road for over a mile and you are on a gentle downwards curve. A recyclable and reusable bag is blown out into the road. Currently you would evaluate the situation, take your foot off the accelerator and decide that the bag will be blown clear it and anyway it’s too dangerous to brake hard in these conditions so you don’t. The bag is blown clear and everything is OK. A blip in any journey.
Not however if your car suddenly decides to apply the brakes on it’s own. With only 10m range at 50, which isn’t even the max speed possible in our emasculated society, that is practically an emergency stop. With no real warming. You could slip on the road or be run over by the vehicle behind. Who’s fault would that be? Well in the first instance yours for going too fast and in the second it’ll be OK as it’s the following vehicle. Hope that makes you feel better in hospital. If you live that is.
I can think of several scenarious where this could create problems and not just for other drivers.
Now I like computers and I do believe that the time will come where computers will be able to manage the intricacies of driving but I’m not so sure about this. Sounds too dangerous to me. I’ll stick with a buzzer thanks.
One last point. I’ve heard that people slam on the brakes so that people run into the back of them at slow speeds so they can claim for whiplash. The person behind always gets the blame unless that person is plod. ‘The car did it’ probably won’t cut it I would think.