These car technologies could save your life
Advances in technologies have made a significant impact on the motoring industry, and for car owners and sellers in particular.
The majority of these improvements aim to enhance the practicality and safety of vehicles.
With future car technologies moving steadily towards driverless vehicles, motorists will be able to rely on the car for alone for safety and practicality when travelling to and from places.
An online site, quoteme.ie, provides a resource for current and future safety technology.
The resource aims to disseminate information on how existing and new safety technologies are impacting road safety – either now or in the future.
Here is an idea of some important technologies (current and future) that are changing safety aspects in the motoring industry:
(These are just some of the technologies listed. For more, go to quoteme.ie)
Current
Adaptive headlights
Adaptive headlights are an active safety feature designed to make it safer to drive at night, during twilight or in low-light conditions. Adaptive headlights increase the visibility around curves and over hills. When driving around a bend in the road, standard headlights continue to shine straight ahead, illuminating the side of the road but leaving the road ahead in the dark. using wheel speed sensors to monitor the speed of rotation of each wheel, adaptive headlights turn their beams according to the direction you are steering. A self-levelling system points the light beam up or down, according to the position of the vehicle.
The first adaptive headlights were seen on the 2011 Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class which had an adaptive highbeam and intelligent light system, these were upgraded in 2012 by glare-free and anti-dazzle technology. By 2013 however, Audi introduced the first digitally controlled LED adaptive highbeam on their Audi A8. The lamps are controlled by the vehicle’s onboard computer, and to improve cornering, its navigation system sends predictive route data to the lights so that they shift the focus of their beam before the driver even turns the wheel. Additionally, the matrix structure of the diodes allows for the light to be brighter in one area of the lamp than another. How is this done? Each diode is controlled individually by a computer – this allows light to be dimmed for oncoming vehicles but light is still spread in zones between vehicles.
Lane departure warning system (LDWS)
A camera mounted above the rear-view mirror monitors road markings. The system warns the driver if the car begins to drift out of its lane, but only if the signal isn’t on. The warning can take the form of visual, audible or vibrating alerts.
The pioneers of this technology were the Japanese – Mitsubishi and Nissan lead the way at first with Toyota and Honda closely following suit. 1992 was the year in which Mitsubishi first offered video-based lane-keeping technology on their Debonair model of vehicle. By 2006 this technology has evolved to include more sophisticated object and pattern recognition processors: these would issue a warning and auto-steer the car back into its rightful path. Nowadays more advanced LDWS systems keep the vehicle in lane automatically.
Dynamic Brake Support
Dynamic brake support (DBS) is a crash avoidance technology and works as an automatic emergency braking system that detects an impending forward crash with another vehicle if the driver brakes. DBS alerts the driver to take corrective action to avoid the crash, and automatically applies the brakes to reduce the severity of the crash. Dynamic braking lowers the wear of friction-cased components, and also reduces energy consumption.
The first instance of collision avoidance technology testing was noted in 1995 and when it was eventually rolled our around 1996, it was initially radar based with only minor control over the action of the brakes. Today the technology has significant control over the brakes – it overrides the driver’s manual action to ensure the braking distance is as short as possible. It also automatically recognises an emergency collision situation and applies the full force of the brakes even if the driver hasn’t fully activated them, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Forward Collision Warning
Designed to reduce the severity of an accident, a forward collision warning system uses either all-weather radar or laser and camera to detect an imminent crash. In addition to providing an alert, the system can also automatically take action without driver input, either braking for low vehicle speeds up to 50 km/h, or steering for higher speeds.
Cars fitted with collision avoidance systems may also be equipped with autonomous cruise control (ACC), using the same forward-looking sensors. First developed by Hughes Research Laboratories in 1995 and integrated into Honda models in 2003, forward collision warning systems are now mandatory in the EU.
Future
Animal detection
Radars and infrared cameras at the front of the car will detect large animals ahead. The system will be programmed to recognise the shapes of animals in daylight and at night. It will automatically apply brakes if an animal is detected. The technology is being refined to take into account the fast and erratic movements of animals such as kangaroos. Both Volvo and Mercedes are incorporating animal detection systems into their in-car safety equipment that will detect large animals in the vehicle’s path. The systems are designed to give the driver an extra 2-3 seconds to react to these threats, allowing the driver more time to brake, steer or both.
This particular technology is useful in countries which have large wild animals, for example moose in North America and Canada. Twenty vehicle manufacturers in the US have committed to making this a standard technology in their vehicles by September 2022. While some manufacturers have also adapted this technology to sense both cyclists and pedestrians, it would seem that in countries where wild animals aren’t that prevalent, this technology would be better served for this purpose.
Infrared Headlights
Infrared headlights incorporate an infrared light source built into the car to illuminate the road ahead with light that is invisible to humans. Thermodynamic cameras increase the driver’s ability to see beyond the regular reach of the headlights in darkness or in poor weather conditions. Mercedes has introduced infrared night-vision spotlights that can flash at any pedestrians it detects in order to warn both the driver and the pedestrians. Lexus introduced a system combining a windshield mounted infrared camera and projectors within the headlamps.
This technology will actually be able to spot pedestrians and cyclists in the dark regardless of whether they are wearing reflective clothing or not (although not wearing reflective clothing seems like a weird reality.) With reliable technology keeping cyclists safe after dark, it will likely increase their number on the roads and possibly have the counter effect of reducing the number of cars.
Remote Vehicle Shutdown
A device currently exists which enables the user to remotely disable the car it’s connected to. Technology is in development that will enable the user to shutdown any car within a 50m radius using radio pulses. The technology is intended for police, military and security use and could be used to disable car-bombs, as well as mitigate damage caused by dangerous driving.
In the USA, there are reports of car lenders disabling cars because of missed payments. The proliferation of these devices has caused havoc and even life-threatening situations. A further use of disabling technology is when the police blast electromagnetic pulses to disable vehicles involved in high-speed car chases.
Autonomous Cars
Autonomous – or driverless- cars will operate by themselves, allowing the ‘driver’ to relax. Autonomous cars will rely on a range of sensors to detect and interact with their surrounding. Current advanced safety technologies mean that some cars are already semi-autonomous, but fully autonomous vehicles are in development.
Google, Toyota, BMW, and Audi are among the companies actively testing autonomous, and several US states have already legalised fully self-driving cars for testing purposes. Google’s self-driving car has attracted a fair amount of press, not least because of its unique position in the market, but also after the result of a collision of their self-driving car with a bus February 2016. While there have been other Google car vrashed, this one was the first to be acknowledged as being the fault of the technology rather than human error to which other collisions had previously been attributed. The impact of driverless technology will be massive and wide reaching; the notion of car ownership will change as people will increasingly use shared taxis which will decrease overall car ownership and reduce the number of cars on the road. This in turn, could change how urban areas are designed, perhaps heralding a more pedestrianised era.
Source: quoteme.ie