Automakers' engineering teams are working feverishly on new accident-avoidance technologies, like those that can sense an impending crash and, in response, upgrade a car's liability coverage. But engineers are also finding that these complex, active systems, unlike passive features like air bags, are really difficult to test outside the realm of machine logic. How do you design a physical experiment that won't put a human driver at risk, while still injecting enough randomness into a real-life driving scenario to assess how well such a system works alongside a driver's own reactions? Uh, apparently nobody knows.
Crash-avoidance systems are gaining support, but proving difficult to test [AutoWeek]
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BMW 7-Series to get Infrared-Detection System; Lane Change Nanny: Iteris s Award-Winning Lane Departure System; Renault Using Virtual Reality to Develop Smart Braking [internal]