Cats, dogs and slow-moving pedestrians are celebrating Nissan's new safety technologies as the potential life-giving totems they may turn out to be. The company offerred test drives Monday, at a research center near Tokyo, of test-bed vehicles equipped with some of its new, "smart" automotive features that take the burden of good driving off the driver and onto a bunch of electrical gadgetry where it belongs.
Some of the technologies Nissan demonstrated included the following:
Lane Departure Prevention system, which uses a combination of a camera and several computerized switches to control front and rear braking, which can nudge wayward cars back into their lane, should they suddenly veer. As many New York drivers will lament, using turn signals disables the system; not using turn signals allows the system to treat you like a jackass who can't drive.
Around View Monitor shows a 360-degree outside view on a display attached to the car's dashboard. Icons representing obstacles around the car are shown as if from above, with the car appearing in the center.
A fuel-cell stack — Ok, not a safety technology. It's actually the part of a fuel-cell vehicle that generates energy, produced when stored hydrogen combines with oxygen in the air to make water. (Oh, a stack, now we get it.)
Nissan's Smart Cars Return to Lanes, Park with Ease [Technology Review]
Related:
Researchers Creating In-Car System to Rouse Snoozing Drivers [internal]