Building the Zero-Fatality Car 509
CWmike writes "In the future, new cars might include an appealing sticker: 'This car is rated for zero fatalities.' John Brandon reports that Volvo, for instance, has launched a program called Vision 2020, which states, 'By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.' It includes not just new protective measures in the car, but technology for communicating dangers to and from the car. Other car companies have similar, less formalized programs. As ambitious as it seems, Ed Kim, an analyst at automotive research firm AutoPacific, says the zero-fatality goal is achievable. In the next 10 years, there will be a confluence of safety technologies — such as road-sign recognition, pedestrian detection and autonomous car controls — that lead to safer cars, says Kim. Will your next car look something like this?"
What? (Score:5, Funny)
I need a car metaphor.
Re: (Score:2)
In the future, we will finally have flying cars [transeum.com].
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the fundamental law of the universe.
Just when you think you have idiot-proofed something, Nature will design a better idiot just to spite you.
Thus the reason we have to have instructions printed on a package of toothpicks, and my clothes iron has a tag on the power cord saying "warning: do not iron clothes while wearing them."
Pretty much anything on this list [rinkworks.com].
I'm waiting for Idiocracy to occur. After all, we already have "Ow, My Balls" on TV - ABC just calls it "Wipeout."
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Just when you think you have idiot-proofed something, Nature will design a better idiot just to spite you.
Currently, the worst drivers tend to remove themselves from the gene pool, or at least have the possibility of death place some sort of upper bound on how moronically one can drive. Just imagine the type of idiot nature will be able to design once Volvo removes these constraints.
not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately they tend to remove others... Like the one who used to signal a lane change (without looking), wait 5 seconds, and change lane (again, without looking). Never had an accident, but probably ignored a trail of accidents in the (unused) rear-view mirror.
Sort of, but not really (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I'm under the impression that some of the bleeding obvious warning have little to do with "nature designing a bigger idiot" as with basically a law system where people can pretend to be idiots to sue for millions. And where juries of disgruntled anti-corporatist can actually decide to award an idiot that a company pays his medical bill, even when essentially ruling that the idiot is to blame for his own misfortune. Just because, you know, it would be somehow mean to tell a little old lady to pay for her own skin graft, when you can just take some money from a corporation to cover those costs.
E.g., "Wanda Hudson, 44, of Mobile, Ala. After Hudson lost her home to foreclosure, she moved her belongings to a storage unit. She says she was inside her unit one night "looking for some papers" when the storage yard manager found the door to her unit ajar -- and locked it. She denies that she was sleeping inside, but incredibly did not call for help or bang on the door to be let out! She was not found for 63 days and barely survived; the formerly "plump" 150-pound woman lived on food she just happened to have in the unit, and was a mere 83 pounds when she was found. She sued the storage yard for $10 million claiming negligence. Even though the jury was not allowed to learn that Hudson had previously diagnosed mental problems, it found Hudson was nearly 100 percent responsible for her own predicament -- but still awarded her $100,000."
Source: http://www.stellaawards.com/2003.html [stellaawards.com]
Roll that around in your head. Even after ruling her responsible, they _still_ awarded her $100,000. God knows what for. Apparently just because it would be heartless _not_ to rob a company to pay for a trespasser's misfortune.
More worryingly, even warning signs really don't matter any more.
E.g., "Hornbeck volunteered for the Army and served a stint in Iraq. After getting home, he got drunk, wandered into a hotel's service area (passing "DANGER" warning signs), crawled into an air conditioning unit, and was severely cut when the machinery activated. Unable to care for himself due to his drunkenness, he bled to death. A tragedy, to be sure, but one solely caused by a supposedly responsible adult with military training. Despite his irresponsible behavior -- and his perhaps criminal trespassing -- Hornbeck's family sued the hotel for $10 million, as if it's reasonably foreseeable that some drunk fool would ignore warning signs and climb into its heavy duty machinery to sleep off his bender."
Source: http://www.stellaawards.com/2007.html [stellaawards.com]
E.g., a woman sued Burger King after spilling the coffee onto her own lap, because, get this, although the cup did warn that the coffee is hot, the employee didn't also warn her verbally that it's dangerously hot. Because, you know, apparently otherwise it doesn't matter.
Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/806345/posts [freerepublic.com]
Worse yet, in some parts you can even get to pay big bucks for something you didn't personally cause or had any way to cause or prevent.
E.g., when a hare-brained pyrotechnics stunt went wrong in a bar and resulted in a deadly blaze, it wasn't just the owners that had to pay. The list of those who were made to pay millions or had to reach a settlement (again in the millions), included the radio channel which aired an ad for the event, and the manufacturer of the beer they served there (and literally had no other involvement with the event, and likely only heard of it when they got sued), and the importer of that beer, and Home Depot who sold the material they used as insulation and which was ignited by their hare-brained pyrotechnics. (Although Home Depot never sold it as fire-proof or anything.)
Source, for example: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-13-540 [usatoday.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Uh...relatively low speed impacts can be fatal. Especially when smacked into an "immovable" object. Remember, it's 1/2*m*v^2 —small changes to v make big changes to your face.
It is old tech, and called a train. (Score:3)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
I need a car metaphor.
So, basically, imagine lots and lots of corporations as cars on a busy Interstate. On one hand, we have SCO which was a tanker truck filled with benzene and toxic sludge going to the nearest creak to offload, but before it got there, it had a catastrophic wreck and burned for a while. As a matter of fact, the sludge was so nasty that it has been burning for several years, and fire crews have not been able to extinguish it.
As for the zero-fatality car, let me put it this way. Since the Interstate (the world-wide work force) is still blocked with toxic sludge and fire (the recession and its causes), nothing is getting done, and Volvo isn't selling as well as it did. In order to appease shareholders temporarily and raise Volvo's stock for the next week or two, Volvo has decided to build a vehicle that not only can withstand any wreck, but since it is zero-fatality, you just can drive right through that fire and toxic sludge and be on your merry way to economic recovery.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Will you settle for a ship metaphor?
This is like rating a passenger vessel as "unsinkable".
I thought they already solved this problem (Score:4, Funny)
Go go gadget Car-From-Demolition Man!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know if you've seen TFA or just making a quick joke but a comparison between the main picture and a google image search for "demolition man car" shows that you're basically spot on!
Not good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Come talk to me when they figure out the "zero fatality life."
Re:Not good enough (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Funny)
A world in which only the idiots die...The idea has promise.
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There is no zero (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There is no zero (Score:5, Funny)
Untrue.
How many times have you had sex with a living female human being this week?
Thought so.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
0.75
and it was expensive
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>>>0.75
So you started at 11:45 pm last week and finished at 12:45 am this week (hence 0.75 times this week). That's pretty typical for a college Saturday night/early Sunday morning. But usually it's free of charge.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But usually it's free of charge.
Some people buy movie tickets, flowers, and dinner. Some just pay a hooker. Either way you're paying for sex.
If you really wanted to pedantic about it, there's also opportunity cost. Think of all of the other exciting things you could be doing, such as coding or watching Gentoo install.
Re:There is no zero (Score:5, Funny)
Untrue.
How many times have you had sex with a living female human being this week?
Thought so.
I find it curious that you felt it necessary to qualify that in three separate ways: "living", "female", and "human".
Zero is a great goal even if it's unreachable (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, "zero" is not feasible on an open road where other people can drive cars that don't prevent them from doing stupid things.
However, smarts that decrease the risk of being involved in an accident and which decrease the speed and increase control during an accident go a long way to reducing not only fatalities but injuries.
Mechanical safety features like stability control, rollover and cabin-crush-in prevention, improved air bags and seat belts, and other features increase survivability.
So, can we ever ge
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the death-and-serious-injury rate amoungst Volvo owners, multiplied by the number of Volvo owners, multiplied by some arbitrarily large time period, is small but finite
And if that finite number is less than a recall, they won't do it.
In a Volvo? (Score:4, Interesting)
By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo
But what about those outside the Volvo?
Re:In a Volvo? (Score:5, Informative)
"The goal is unique in that Volvo Cars has designated a year and is showing a social responsibility that also extends to people in other vehicles and pedestrians," says Anders Eugensson, safety expert at Volvo Cars. "We are very clear about the fact that our cars should not negatively affect other people at the moment of an accident. In addition, no unprotected roadusers should be seriously injured or killed."
Re:In a Volvo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually 4 wheels aren't necessary; 2 will suffice.
However studies show that 4 wheels do tend to degrade operator attentiveness much more than 2 wheels do. Motorcyclists usually focus better on the task at hand (i.e. operating the motorcycle) than automobilists do, because they have fewer things such as passengers, radios/CD/MP3 players, heating/cooling systems, phones, computers, etc. to distract them from it. They also get direct feedback (in terms of wind, seeing the pavement rush past their feet, etc.) of how fast they're going, which helps in making judgments about (for example) how much to brake before making a turn. The more that vehicles mask the vehicle's speed from the operator (smoother ride, better soundproofing, etc), the more dangerous they become.
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For an extreme example see Formular 1 cars, those drive at extremely high speed and crash frequently into walls or other cars, yet they managed to have zero-fatalities for the last 15 years and most of the time the driver can just walk away from a crash. Now you can't directly apply all of those technologies to normal everyday cars, but given that normal cars don't need to drive at high speed under race conditions it shows that a near zero-fatality car is possible.
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The missing piece in the article:
by 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed by a new Volvo
Re:In a Volvo? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In a Volvo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well your old car might look like it comes off better than the volvo. But likely your V8 engine will end up up crushing you while the volvo will crumble everywhere but the passenger compartment.
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Better you than me, buddy!
Re:In a Volvo? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe they plan to use ejector seats. If the car senses a dangerous situation, you are promply ejected from it to protect the reputation of Volvo.
prior art (Score:5, Funny)
They can use some of the same technology as was utilized on this motorcycle:
http://biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=21816 [biertijd.com]
Auto-car. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm really interested in the promise of an automated car that you don't have to get a license for or actually drive. They would be inherently safer, even taking failures into consideration. Of course, this will never fly (in America, at least) because we have this mentality that we need to be actively behind the wheel of a six ton three-story tall truck with twelve wheels, wider than two lanes of traffic, with a pair of truck-nuts dangling off the back. To pick our snot-nosed kids up from the grade school.
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Snowflake won't have enough leg room in anything less!
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yes, i would love that. Then people would run around with HERC cannons and watch the mayhem, put it on youtube.
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To paraphrase Mr Heinlein, "forget Republican or democrat, left or Right; there are two kinds of people in the world, those who wish to control others, and those who have no such desire."
Re:Auto-car. (Score:4, Interesting)
With human controlled cars, the human is presumed to be the responsible agent, unless the vehicle can specifically be proven to be at fault(ie. brake failures under normal use, flipping over and catching fire if you tap a wall at 10mph, spontaneous acceleration, etc.). Humans are actually pretty miserable drivers, especially the distracted, tired, intoxicated, bored, old, trying-to-outrun-the-cops, and other pathological case ones; but the liability for the deaths, injuries, and property damage caused is spread out across a huge number of them in a fairly thin layer.
Now, if the car were automated, there would be a strong case to be made that the car, and thereby its manufacturer, is the responsible agent. Even if a car achieved, say, a factor of 10 reduction in accidents(not wildly implausible, with some technological advance), the amount of liability incurred by the manufacturer would be absolutely crippling.
It would take a sea-change in how accident liability is allocated for automated vehicles to make it out of test tracks, rail systems, and specific instances(like antilock brakes).
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They're called taxis. You get in and use voice commands to tell it where to go. Or, hop on a bus and take a pre-determined route.
Re:Auto-car. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Auto-car. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm no mathematician, but I suspect your personal anecdotal experiences may not be conclusive of the overall accident and fatality rate of the rest of the nation (or world).
Drivers with the greatest fatality rates are people under twenty-four years of age (especially under nineteen) and older drivers (over fifty or sixty - I forget which).
Stories of old people accidentally stepping on the gas instead of the break are pretty common and young people are just careless, inexperienced, irresponsible, and stupid. But of course, you can't dare take driving away from them, because getting behind the wheel of a 75mph 3,000lb chunk of steel before you can even be trusted to smoke, vote, hold a full time job, or live on your own is considered about as "unamerican" as you can get.
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A police officer gave us the national statistics back when I took drivers ed. The elderly cause the most accidents. Women are more likely to be in accidents than men. However, males under 25 are much more likely to be in accidents resulting in serious damage, injury or fatality.
Another consideration: if you have been in enough accidents to group the co-responsible under the category "all the people," maybe it's not the "young" who are the problem in your case.
Re:Auto-car. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people should not be driving. Period.
?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Also, I don't follow soccer, but I think you may have a confused understanding of the game. I seem to recall that there are only twenty-two players on a soccer field, not 300.
He was assuming some place other than the USA, where the would actually be spectators around the field, as well as the players on it :P
Re:Auto-car. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anecdote: The first year the Calgary police bought cars with ABS they cracked up twice as many in one winter as the cars without ABS. As soon as the ABS started vibrating the pedal the cops backed off on the brakes and smacked into whatever they were trying to avoid. Once they added ABS practice to the emergency driving training the accident rate went down to where the ABS cars had only half as many accidents as the non-ABS cars.
Re:Auto-car. (Score:5, Insightful)
To be blunt, you have trouble with automated cars because you are a bad driver.
Note that when I say "bad", I'm referring to your judgement, not your skill.
The fact that you are regularly bumping up against the limits of your vehicle means that you're driving too fast, following too closely, and merging with too little margin.
Eventually, you will screw up, and when you do you'll cause a lot of damage because you have left very little margin for safety.
You are driving on public roads with other drivers, many of whom are unpredictable and far less skilled than you. This does not give you a license to drive aggressively - indeed, it mandates that you drive defensively to mininize the risks.
Go show off your skills at autocross or the track. Do everything you can to avoid using those skills on the highway.
Re:Auto-car. (Score:4, Insightful)
Driving tests do not help with any of these issues. Here in Brazil the driving tests are very difficult to master if you're not a somewhat decent driver (it's very common to hear people failing 7 or 8 times and then just giving up).
All of this doesn't help to make the traffic any better at all. People will just "train" for the exam and then after they pass, they just unlearn most of it.
Also, you can't safely test highway driving abilities as a bad driver would endanger the other drivers around and whoever is doing the evaluation. So you have a chicken and egg problem. People usually only drive on highways around here after some experience "in the city" and usually avoid heavy traffic until they're comfortable.
The only good formula is common sense. No amount of regulation will fix it. While I do agree that the driving exam in the US is a joke, a good exame would only improve things by a very very small amount.
Impossible everywhere but in PRspeak (Score:5, Insightful)
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Two hundred years ago a horseless carriage was impossible. 150 years ago an airplane was impossible. 100 years ago a computer was impossible. 50 years ago a cell phone was impossible.
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As cars have gotten safer they have also gotten far more powerful. The fact that a 16 year old can get behind the wheel of a 250kW vehicle is a scary tho
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pedestrians (Score:2)
So how about the pedestrians?
NOTICE! (Score:5, Funny)
WARNING: You are exceeding the speed-limit by 5 mph, we will alert the authorities...
WARNING: Your car is overdue for it's monthly maintenance check and will not start after august 1.
WARNING: You took that corner too fast for current conditions, we have alerted the authorities.
WARNING: Your car has exceeded it's 5 year life span and has been terminated. Please contact your dealer for a great deal on a new one.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
WARNING: O RELY? A11 y0ur bas3s ar3 b3l0nging to us n0w.
[Car smashes into concrete wall at 170MPH...]
WARNING NON dealer lube job done go to dealer now! (Score:2)
WARNING NON dealer lube job done go to dealer now!
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Exactly. I don't generally drive anything made after about 1975. :P
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Exactly. I don't generally drive anything made after about 1975. :P
GASP! I hope you have the proper permits for that! You could put someones eye out or even perhaps enjoy driving it!?!
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WARNING: You are a paranoid idiot who is trying to cover up his fear of change by attempts at being witty,
NO U!
Sounds like zero-vulnerability network security (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds possible to me (Score:2)
.... if you limit the speed to 30mph and fit missile launchers to destroy anything which comes towards you at more than 30mph
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Seriously. I have a vision of somebody with a bumper sticker that triggers other cars' pedestrian avoidance system to slam on the brakes because it sees a "person". That'd be lovely on the highway.
Terminator car (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of the military applications! The Army should start putting every soldier in a new Volvo. You can shoot at them, you can bomb them, you can even throw tactical nukes at them...but they keep coming!
Should we be worried about the coming Swedish blitzkrieg?
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Hell, we can even send somebody up in one to probe the innards of the Sun.
2020 (Score:2, Insightful)
'By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.'
By 2020, nobody may be able to afford a new Volvo, so we'll keep driving the 20 year old deathtrap ones.
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I find that hard to believe... (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as Id like to believe all these new and wonderful technologies, I wouldn't underestimate the ability of human beings to inflict a grevious harm on themeselves in the most creative ways. You may have the zero-fatality car but the guy plowing into you head first might not and the result would most likely be just as fatal. OTOH, every bit of safety counts.
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Worse yet, the more safety measures you add on, the less people feel they need to pay attention so it can make the relatively few failures more catastrophic.
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And of course, there's an excellent source of proof that human beings can get themselves killed in amazingly stupid ways: The Darwin Awards [darwinawards.com].
Building the Zero-Fatality Car (Score:2)
To the guy who said
its still a good question though, those outside matter. I hope Volvos goals are not so narrow they haven't forgotten them.
Plus I hope this is't a marketing ploy.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
. Please heed this advise kids before its to late, and you make an ass of your self.
Re:Building the Zero-Fatality Car (Score:4, Insightful)
Please heed this advise kids before its to late, and you make an ass of your self.
For instance, by failing to correctly spell common English words generally taught at the 4th grade level while condescendingly lecturing others.
Ditto for mis-punctuation and general poor communications skill.
But kudos for violating the long-standing Slashdot taboo against reading the article.
Don't see the big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
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Well, I'd prefer to kill you than have to pay 5 cents extra for gas, but as a society we've decided that not killing people is a pretty good thing to do.
The six-million-dollar car (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that safety costs money. There's the materials involved, which aren't cheap. There's the engineering, which isn't (or shouldn't be) cheap. There's the electronics, which are getting cheaper. There's the redundancy, which isn't cheap. People don't like saving their own lives when it costs money or time to do so.
That said, I sincerely hope this takes off, and that by some miracle of economics it's affordable. We have the technology...
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The problem is that safety costs money.
Economy of scale is in full swing when it comes to cars. We have a billion or so of them on the roads, it is quite easy to drive down prices at that scale. Do you remember when airbags were expensive extras?
So what happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
...a semi truck falls off of an overpass and lands on top of one?
...a semi truck going 200mph the other direction crosses the median?
...a semi truck going 200mph on the other road runs a red light?
...that logging truck in front of you loses its cargo?
...that banana truck in front of you loses its cargo, and sends you through the guardrail?
...you run out of gas while crossing the train tracks?
...some idiot leaves their kids in one with windows up for "just a couple minutes" during the middle of summer?
...someone decides to carjack you?
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Wait... You can get a semi to 200mph?
On a serious note... There's no excuse for the kid left in the car. But there is existing technology to handle this: If there's a person in the car and the interior temperature exceeds x, automatically roll down the windows and set off the alarm.
easy answers (Score:5, Funny)
Simple low-tech solution to deliver this today (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, not more than once...
Some how I doubt (Score:2)
Didn't Cordwainer Smith write a series of books... (Score:2)
...about the problems with a zero-fatality society?
Zero fatality car... (Score:5, Insightful)
Volvo in 10 years.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Volvo has just been bought by Geely, a chinese firm.
Sure the chinese have promised to keep volvo volvo, not to mess with the whole swedish safety stuff, but what car brand has ever been taken over and NOT changed significantly towards the new parent company? Hell, all current volvos sit on Ford chassis.
Good luck making a zero fatality car with the chinese at the helm...
Pet Rock Car (Score:2)
My Pet Rock Car from the 70's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_rock [wikipedia.org] ) has never had a fatality.
Now, if I could only remember where I parked it . . .
They expect to be out of business that soon? (Score:2)
> 'By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.'
Might happen if, by 2020, nobody shall be in a new Volvo at all.
You can't make it idiot proof (Score:2)
One can be had today (Score:2)
Solution Calculated (Score:5, Funny)
Car: Your ex-husband has a gun. He seems agitated. ...Solution calculated. Please exit the vehicle.
Car: His blood pressure is rising, and his pupils are dilated.
Car: Considering prime directive of zero fatalities in a new Volvo...
Car:
We'll need something to replace/supplement GPS. (Score:2)
A lot of these vehicle status broadcast systems they're proposing rely on accurate location data for the vehicles, and quite often the term "GPS" is used to infer that's what they'll be using as a source.
Anyone who's driven a car inside a tunnel or inside a building/carpark knows that GPS is shit and doesn't work unless you're out in the open. Locations in tunnels could probably be taken care of with low-power FM beacons sending their lat/long/AMSL at regular intervals through the tunnel (additional infrast
Fatally flawed!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Great concept, but there are some rather glaring problems.
Let's take the "Pedestrian detection with auto brake" feature for example:
http://www.volvocars.com/intl/top/about/corporate/volvo-sustainability/safety/pages/pedestrian-detection-with-full-auto-brake.aspx [volvocars.com]
Lovely in theory, except for all the moronic teens who will delight in jumping out in front of Volvos confident that the car can't hit them. You're going to have idiot kids hit by drivers of old style cars, as well as a whole bunch of tail end collisions caused by this. It'd render roads near schools undrivable at closing time.
Oh, and you have to love the fact that they're adding a warning light that flashes when it sees a problem. Which seems to miss the fact that the warning light itself is going to immediately distract you, and make it more likely that you're not going to see the pedestrian it's trying to warn you of.
While backed by the best of intentions, I just can't see this becoming reality for a long while.
Demolition Man (Score:2)
I liked the expanding foam protective material in the car from the movie Demolition Man. There is a great deal that can be done to make a car safe(r) but it is ridiculous to think that a car can truly be "zero fatalities". If you have ever seen what happens when it is car vs. train it would be prohibitively expensive to make a vehicle safe enough to take that title.
In the human body there are many types of deceleration injuries that will kill you. Some are cou contra-coup brain injuries and accidents where
More Obese Cars? (Score:2, Insightful)