Week 10

This will be my last post. I hope you enjoyed this blog and learned a few things about new driving technologies and driving safety in general. I appreciated the experience this project offered and enjoyed doing all the research. If you have any unanswered questions, feel free to comment them

Week 9

We have discussed many technologies on this blog, some decades old and others just beginning testing. Currently all these systems are driver assists, but soon enough they could replace the driver completely. Until that day comes, we are still going to have to rely on people to drive their cars safely. Since that is not guaranteed, the computerized car and the systems comprising it are here to help us, but should not be relied on completely. The computerized car has the ability to save thousands of lives and prevent hundreds of thousands accidents and resulting injuries. The blink of an eye can be the difference between a normal day and nightmare for weeks, months, or years to come. If a few new safety systems can prevent that, then I believe it is well worth the extra money when buying a new car.

Week 8

Looking further into the future, we have autonomous vehicles. But it may not be that far in the future. Modern cars have the necessary hardware to create a self driving car. The existing cameras, lasers, and radar used on cars today for systems, such as forward collision warning and blind spot assistance, can be used for autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are the next big thing in the automotive industry. Many big car companies, including Audi and Mercedes, newer car companies, like Tesla, and non-automotive companies, like Google and Apple (rumored) are working on creating a viable self driving car.

So what exactly is a self driving car?  Well, it is a pretty simple concept. It is a car that can stop, accelerate, steer, and think on its own, without any human input. There is a button to turn it on and off, and that is about it. People make mistake, a lot. People are the cause of the vast majority of automobile accidents. Self driving cars, assuming they have a large portion of cars on the road, could save more than 20,000 lives a year.

If modern cars have the modern hardware necessary for a self driving car, why don't we have them? It is a combination of things holding back autonomous driving.

One, they aren't ready for fully autonomous driving. Google's self driving car, according to a presentation as SXSW, has mastered highway driving. But highway driving is easy compared to city driving. City driving involves more turning and stopping, which autonomous vehicles can handle, but cities also have one thing no one can really figure out: humans. If the car sees someone on the edge of the sidewalk, the car may think he/she is going to cross the street, so the car stops. But the person could just be staring there. There are a myriad of other out of the ordinary situations that can fool a self driving car. The car will have to figure out if the car ahead of it is broken down and it should go around, or if it is just heavy traffic. These cars essentially have to have artificial intelligence. The 2016 Audi Q7, which is equipped with many technological safety features but is not autonomous, has a computer rated at 740 gigaflops (billion floating-point operations per second), which I guess is pretty good since it is almost as fast as the best supercomputer in 2000.

Another challenge for self driving cars, just like some of the other safety features discussed in this blog, is government regulation. Self driving cars are allowed to perform testing on public roads, but we will get the first self-driving car (some companies say by 2020) long before it is allowed to be sold to the public. The Google car has no steering wheel and no pedals, yet, because of government regulation, still has mirrors and windshield wipers even though they do not benefit the occupants.

Another issue is public acceptance. Many people are not ready to trust their lives to a computer, even though people make many more mistakes than computers.

Other issues include cost. These cars, until mass produced, will be more expensive than traditional cars. Liability is also a problem in the case that there is an accident with a self driving car.

However there are many pros of self driving cars other than less accidents. There could be a future where every car is self driving. In this theoretical future, there is no reason to own a car. Cars could be called on demand, like using Uber, but on a much larger scale. There is no need to have parking lots, because the car that dropped you off goes and gets some one else and a different car comes back to get you. Because the cars do not waste time sitting in a parking lot or a garage, the number or self driving taxis to fulfill our current driving requirements is around a third as many cars on the road today. No more traffic jams, less oil consumption, more affordable transportation. This may sound nice, but this isn't a near future. With around 250 million cars in the US and 15 million new cars sold each year, it will be a very long time before self driving cars make up any percentage of cars on the road.

Week 7

This week we will talk about a system that does not monitor other cars with cameras or lasers, but by communicating with each other. Unlike the previous systems we have talked about, Direct Short Range Communication (DSRC) is not currently available on vehicles today. DSRC is divided into two categories, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. With V2V, cars communicate with each other, and with V2I, cars communicate with infrastructure such as toll booths.

V2V works by using a type of Wi-Fi to communicate. It communicates the car's speed, direction, steering position, amount of braking to the cars around it. The other cars then process the information and warn the driver with a light, sound, or vibration if it thinks a crash is imminent.

These system are still in development, but have significant pros and cons compared to the systems we have already discussed. Some of the pros:

Because the systems use wifi, the cars to have a greater range than other systems. It also allows to see through obstacles, including around blind corners and through other vehicles. With the camera and laser based systems, they can only see the first obstacle. V2V offers a much greater view of the car's surroundings. It also isn't hindered by weather like the other systems.

However there are some cons to V2V:


The biggest one, and it is a big one, is that it requires other vehicles to have the same system. The goal of this system is to have everything on the road connected to a network to create a detailed map of the vehicle's surroundings. If only a few cars have V2V, that map will be very limited in its accuracy of the actual situation. They are also slightly less accurate than the other systems. These systems can also only offer warnings. While V2V systems are not hindered by weather, they can be inhibited by urban canyons (roads lined with skyscrapers) and poor GPS signal. Another worry is privacy, since there systems do share you location.

However, V2V can work with the other systems to maximize the safety capabilities.

While some of the other systems can also detect cyclists and pedestrians with cameras and lasers, V2V can also do it with the same advantages over the other systems that it has with cars. Because V2V is based off of wireless signals, it can connect with cellphones so pedestrians and cyclists can share their information with other vehicles.

V2V systems allow drivers to know more about their surroundings sooner than current systems. However, since it requires nearly universal adoption to be effective and is still in development, it will be a while before it can start saving lives.

Week 6

This week we will discuss Forward Collision Warning and other associated systems, like adaptive cruise control and automatic braking, some of the newest technological safety systems. When these systems determine a rear-end collision with the car ahead is imminent, it alerts the driver to make him/her brake. If the driver does not brake, some of the better systems have an autobrake feature that slows down the car without the input of the driver. These systems only work if there is a low speed differential between the driver's car and the one ahead of him/her. Many of the systems can prevent a crash if the speed differential is around 12 mph, but only the best can prevent crashes from occurring at 25 mph. The different systems from various manufactures perform differently. Even when the system does not avoid the collision, it significantly reduces the speed at which the collision happens, reducing the amount of damage to both cars and the likelihood of injury to the occupants. Some systems, when detecting a crash is imminent, prepare for a safer collision in other ways as well. The car tightens the seatbelt and closes the windows before the collision occurs to provide the most protection to the occupants.

These forward collision warning and front crash prevention systems work by either using radar, a laser, or a camera to monitor the car ahead. Unlike the laser and camera systems, the radar systems can operate fully in bad weather conditions.

Adaptive cruise control is like normal cruise control, except it can change the speed of the car. It monitors the car ahead of you on the highway and maintains a safe following distance, slowing down or speeding up the car if necessary.

Considering that the majority of crashes are in an urban environment at low speeds and most crashes are rear-end collisions, these types of systems can greatly reduce the number of crashes and injuries to drivers and pedestrians.

Week 5

In this week's post, we are going to talk about another system that aids drivers in changing lanes, or in this case not changing lanes. Lane departure systems prevent the car from leaving its lane. Situations like these arise typically from driver inattention, drowsiness, or distraction. Poor weather could also result in a vehicle leaving its lane. A car leaving its lane can cause deadly accidents, especially if it happens on a highway without a divider (a high speed head on collision isn't good). To correct this, the system uses a camera that monitors the vehicle's position in the lane. If the computer determines the cars path leads to it departing the lane, it alerts the driver. In more advanced systems, if the driver does not properly fix the cars path, the system can steer the wheel back to the correct position.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 40-60% of automobile accidents in the US are a result of cars running of the road or leaving their lane. While these are common on many newer cars, most of the older cars do not have any such systems. However, there is a remedy for this. There are systems that can be added on to older cars. These systems can be as advanced as adding a camera or as simple as downloading an app on your smartphone. Next week we will discuss another system, one of the newest, that monitors the cars position, not relative to the lane lines, but to the car ahead of the driver. 

Week 4

This week we will discuss another technology available on many modern day cars that works to prevent accidents. Blind spot monitoring is a system that alerts the driver when there is another vehicle in the blind spot of the driver. A blind spot is an area to either side of a car that is too forward to be seen by the side view mirrors and too far back to be easily seen in the periphery of the drivers field of vision.

These blind spots can create dangerous situations if the driver thinks he/she can change lanes freely, when in fact he/she cannot. This is especially dangerous on highways where there are multiple lanes, high speeds, and people going faster and slower than they should be. Blind spot monitors use radar or image sensors to detect if a vehicle is there and typically communicates this with a light in the side mirror. Some systems also have other alerts, such as an audible warning, if the driver attempts to switch lanes.

With speed being a major factor in fatal accidents, blind spot monitoring can be especially helpful in prevent highway crashes and injuries. Next week we will talk about another system that also deals with changing lanes, lane departure warnings.


Here is a quick, non-technological partial fix to blind spots. A convex mirror allows the driver to see more of the road next to them. However, these are small and only work if you look at them.