Crash Avoidance Technology: Embrace With Caution

By Denise Johnson | October 29, 2012

  • November 15, 2012 at 9:45 am
    Gary Kreie says:
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    I drove the 2013 Subaru Legacy with Eyesight, and I am sold on the technology. While the dealership probably wouldn’t let me try out pre-collision braking, I did try out the adaptive cruise control. With my foot just hovering over the brake and gas, the car maintained a safe cruise distance from car in front of it on its own. I just steered. And when it stopped all together, my car also came to a smooth stop behind it autonomously. (My wife thought I was doing it.) Eyesight on Subarus uses two TV cameras on each side of the center rear view mirror, so is much cheaper than a radar system. It think it is only $1500 bucks add-on.

    So how much would the insurance industry lower my premiums if I get pre-collision autonomous braking on my car. I hope $150 bucks per year at least — so over 10 years it pays for itself, (and could save my life.)

    And when v2v becomes available within 5 years, cars will not only be able to “see” to stop, they’ll be screaming their position to all the cars around them 50 times per second for some really serious autonomous collision avoidance — by just using last-resort autonomous braking — to too much of an extension from anti-lock brakes.

    Yesterday, NTSB came out strongly in favor of standardizing anti-collision on cars. Europe and Japan have had it for a couple of years. Ford in Europe calls theirs CitySafe. But in the US, the same car companies have been slow to provide, probably because of our overly litigious society. So how many more Americans vs. Europeans will die because this year because of slowed introduction in North America?



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