Picture this. You're driving along, listening to the latest from Fall Out Boy (heaven forbid), when a pedestrian (coincidentally, also listening to Fall Out Boy) wanders off the curb and into your path. That's it for them, right? No. Your car saw him coming. Well, not so much him as a blip in its data bank, as indicated by the careless sot's GPS-enabled cell phone. It's Nissan's Intelligent Transport system, and it uses the latest 3G cellular communications technology, just introduced in Japan (W-CDMA, for the house geeks). It's undergoing tests in Japan to see how well ITS can receive data from pedestrians and other cars in the area, then process that data to determine the actors' relative locations, and warn the driver if they get too close. No word on a Fall Out Boy—weighted algorithm for extra safety, but we're sure that's possible.
Nissan to test Intelligent Transport System in Japan using cell phones [Gizmag]
Related:
Volvo: Now With More Safe; Swedes Announce City Safety System; DaimlerChrysler Tests WLAN Car-to-Car Communication System; Wi-Fi! For Safety! [internal]