TOKYO -- Imagine you are zipping down a residential street when a warning bell and voice sound in your car: "There's a child nearby. Be careful."
You don't see anyone, but you slow down anyway. Seconds later, a child darts into the street chasing a ball. You stop just in time, thanks to the early warning.
Nissan Motor Co. is testing such a warning system in Yokohama, Japan. The test involves 100 cars and 200 children equipped with transmitters. The cars sound the alert whenever a child is within 100 meters of the car.
Welcome to the world of smart, safe cars. New technologies aim to extend the driver's senses well beyond what Mother Nature allows.
These cars will effectively "see" around corners. They will communicate with each other and alert drivers to risks. If necessary, they will intervene if the driver doesn't respond quickly enough.
They will, that is, if customers are willing to pay for the sophisticated gizmos and engineers can work out the bugs.
In addition, carmakers need to navigate a legal minefield as they increasingly allow the car to override the actions, or inactions, of the driver.
Playing it safe
The potential of smart and safe cars -- and the problems
POTENTIAL
Radar, global satellites and other technology can warn drivers of such risks as nearby pedestrians, obstructions and icy roads. They can brake the car to avoid accidents.
OBSTACLES
The devices are expensive. And many people don't want technology to override their driving.
The eyes have it
A number of these technologies already are on the market in Japan, Europe and the United States. They use radar to "see" the road and warn drivers of impending accidents.
Government-organized consortia in Europe and Japan are working on more advanced technologies, as are U.S. carmakers. The European auto industry has a $65.7 million project under way to develop safety technologies, such as lane-departure warnings.
In Japan, Toyota Motor Corp. is working on monitoring a driver's eye movements. The precrash system sounds a warning buzzer if it anticipates an accident, and it sounds the warning earlier if the driver is looking the wrong way.
In effect, the car gives the driver extra eyes that look ahead even if the driver is looking to the side. It will be available on the next-generation flagship Lexus LS sedan when it goes on sale in the United States next fall. Pricing has not been announced.
Overriding the driver, say by applying the brakes before the driver realizes there's a danger, may save lives in some cases. But it entails engineering and legal hazards. For that reason, many of these technologies are likely to be available in less-litigious Japan before they go on sale in the United States.
But even in Japan, carmakers express concern about taking over the driver's tasks.
"Whether we can really stop the car is our concern," says Tetsuo Hattori, Toyota's senior managing director in charge of vehicle engineering. "The driving responsibility rests with the driver. We don't think the car should do everything."
Nonetheless, Toyota is willing for the car to be proactive, rather than just notifying the driver of dangerous conditions. For example, Toyota is testing a system that determines when a speeding car enters a school zone. If the driver doesn't slow down, the car overrides the lead foot and drops the speed to the legal limit.
DaimlerChrysler, as well as parts suppliers Denso Corp. of Japan and Ibeo Automobile Sensor GmbH of Germany are developing vision-recognition software that will identify the hazards along a road as well as humans can. Denso's, for instance, will distinguish between a mailbox and a child, or between a real pedestrian and the statues of Col. Sanders in Santa Claus garb that stand in front of KFC restaurants in Japan in December.
Talk to me
Another promising but problematic area of research is cars that communicate with each other.
The theory is simple. Two cars are speeding toward a blind intersection when broadcasts from each car alert the other to the danger.
Honda Motor Co., for example, is working on ways for cars and motorcycles to communicate that way. Motorcyclists account for 13 percent of all traffic fatalities in Japan.
A European consortium that includes DaimlerChrysler, Fiat Group, Siemens ICN and Robert Bosch GmbH is studying a system called CarTALK. The idea is that if one car senses, say, a slippery road surface, it broadcasts that information to other cars in the area. Drivers will know about the danger before they go sliding into the car in front. It beats watching for brake lights five cars ahead -- if you can see them.
Toyota's feelers
Toyota is working on a system it calls "feelers." The name derives from the resemblance to an insect's antennae that sense what is ahead. Other systems tell the car and driver where other vehicles are. This one says where other vehicles will be.
The device predicts where a car will be one second later by monitoring speed and steering-wheel movement. It then projects a signal to that location. If it picks up a similar signal projected by another vehicle, it warns of an impending accident. In addition, the road infrastructure could be programmed to project signals to cars' feelers. For instance, crosswalks could send out signals when pedestrians have the right-of-way.
After six years of work, the feelers still aren't ready for the market, though. Their performance deteriorates in the rain or on dirty road surfaces.
General Motors is testing an inexpensive system in which vehicles know where each other are by sending and receiving signals bounced off global positioning satellites
With a flashing light and seat vibration, the system can warn a driver changing lanes if there's a vehicle in the blind spot.
The technology can also look ahead and spot vehicles moving slowly or braking hard.
GM says the low cost per car of its system -- about $200 -- means it has a better chance of widespread acceptance than radar-based technology.
Safety vs. privacy
If carried too far, car-to-car communications technology raises privacy issues. In a computer-graphic video touting its vision of future safe cars, Toyota showed cars broadcasting the following message to all other vehicles in the vicinity: "Alert! Elderly driver present."
But elderly drivers may not want that message broadcast to nearby cars as they cruise through dangerous neighborhoods.
"From a privacy standpoint, I think it would be very difficult to transmit information about the driver to other vehicles," says Hiroyuki Watanabe, Toyota's former senior managing director who oversaw advanced research.
Still, Japanese researchers believe firmly that alerting nearby drivers to risks will reduce accidents.
"If a driver knows an area has a higher level of risk, he may drive more carefully," says Toshiyuki Fujikura. He is manager of Nissan's intelligent-transportation systems planning group in the advanced vehicle engineering division. He is responsible for the Yokohama child-alert test.
Kid's SOS
In the Nissan test in Yokohama, 200 children typically attach the transmitter, which is about the size of a deck of cards, to their backpacks.
In the wake of high-profile crimes against children in Japan, parents have insisted that their children carry the transmitters with them at all times. The transmitters send signals to cars and, if the child pushes a button in an emergency, SOS signals to police and parents.
Special transmitters may not be necessary in the future. Later this year, NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest mobile phone carrier, plans to launch a series of cell phones, equipped with global-positioning system software, specifically for children. Within three years, Fujikura predicts, most children in Japan could be carrying phones that easily could incorporate driver-alert technology.
Do the alerts prevent accidents? The test covers too small an area and too few vehicles to say. Instead, Fujikura is trying to determine drivers' reaction to the alerts.
So far the results are mixed. Some drivers appreciate the reminder that they are near children. But others dislike what might be called "false positives" -- a warning that children are present, even though a child is never seen.
Those drivers do not want to be alerted to a child anywhere within 100 meters of the car. Instead, they would prefer a warning only when the child is 40 meters in front of them -- and not when they've already passed the child.
The Yokohama child-alert system is still under development. While researchers struggle to perfect that system and other reliable systems that will make cars safer and more attuned to dangers on the road ahead, the carmakers also will have to navigate a number of hazards down the road.
Their ability to steer around cost, legal and technical potholes will determine which of these safety systems make it to showrooms.