Safety is a main problem of the modern car building and of the modern city life at all. Honda attempts to lower the number of accidents that occur on the street by development of two technologies which are still in experimental stage – Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) and Vehicle-to-Motorcycle (V2M).
Jim Keller, chief engineer for Honda R&D Americas, Inc, said “While these are still experimental technologies, they provide a strong indication of the future potential for the kinds of advanced collision sensing and predictive technologies Honda is developing to further reduce the potential for serious accidents, injuries and even fatalities. These V2P and V2M systems are part of Honda’s broad vision for smarter and safer vehicles and roadways.”
The V2P system requires special car equipment that consists of Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) technology. On the other side the pedestrian must have a special smartphone app if he wants to be detected by the DSRC equipped car. The system signalizes the driver if there is a pedestrian nearby and warns both if there is a possibility of impact between them. V2M works by using the same principle.
Several questions appear naturally: what if the pedestrian forgot his smartphone at home or at his/her workplace, or no matter where? And, what if the pedestrian doesn’t have smartphone at all? Honda is still unable to answer to all what-if’s, but at least the company tries to find a solution to an important problem.
SOURCE: [interestingengineering]
