There's advertising overkill, and then there's using a bulldozer to build a sand castle. The first is lame, the latter is pretty much the best thing you can ever do at a beach. With that idea in mind, Hyundai just re-enacted a famous scene from the movie SPEED just to show off a few driver assist features. Holy smokes.
In case you don't remember SPEED (and why would you as that movie is 20, yes 20 years old), there's a scene in which the cops try to save the passengers on a bus piloted by Sandra Bullock by having them leap off of it at highway speeds, and onto a passing flatbed.
It doesn't work so well in the movie, but Hyundai just did it with a bunch of professional stunt drivers in the California desert without a hitch.
The idea was to prove that the driver assist features on the Hyundai Genesis, like a lane-keeping system, radar-guided cruise control, and an emergency braking system, could theoretically drive the car itself on the highway without any driver inputs. One way to demonstrate that would be to show a bunch of drivers in a convoy doing a "look Ma, no hands" thing, but that's all a bit pedestrian.
A better way to demonstrate it would be to have no drivers in the cars at all.
But there's one problem with that. A Hyundai Genesis can do all the fancy autonomous stuff on its own on the highway without issue, but first it needs a driver to actually get it up to speed. And therein lies the dilemma – how do you get the driver out of the car when the vehicle is already moving?
The first step was to slightly modify the cars so that they'd keep going without a driver in them. Next, I suppose Hyundai could've gone with the traditional tuck-and-roll, and while that would've been very dramatic, and the cars were being piloted by stunt drivers, I don't think it would've been very good for their health.
The other solution was to have them climb out the sunroof, and leap from the car onto the flatbed in the next lane, all without killing themselves.
Oh, and to top it off, they'd leave one stunt driver in the lead car, who would then blindfold themselves and wait for the flatbed to pull in front, whereupon it would commence an emergency stop. The car would then attempt to save his life and a probable decapitation.
Obviously, it all went off without a hitch, otherwise a few months back you would've been reading another article, probably entitled something like "Hyundai Kills A Whole Bunch Of Stunt Drivers Just To Prove A Point, What Monsters."
But you didn't.
In case you're wondering how Hyundai actually did this, check out the short featurette below: