Carmakers Prepare For Augmented Reality Driving 177
An anonymous reader writes "Car manufacturers at CES are showing off their future integration of mobile computing technologies and automobiles. Quoting CNN: 'As digital tech — and our expectations for it — becomes more mobile, carmakers are taking notice. Many automotive designers here seem to have taken inspiration from smartphones, with their promise of being always connected and their vast menu of apps for every purpose. ... Simply point your hand at them, and the icons open to show real-time information: when that bridge over there was built, what band is playing at that nightclub on the left, whether that new café up the street has any tables available. Wave your hand again, and you've made a restaurant reservation. ... All these advancements may make driving more interesting. Or they may spoil one of modern society's last refuges from the hyper-connected digital world. Either way, they are coming soon.'"
Stop multi-tasking! (Score:5, Insightful)
How about when you are driving, you pay attention to driving?
Re:Stop multi-tasking! (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe we'll get lucky and the car will drive itself?
Re:Stop multi-tasking! (Score:5, Funny)
You have a wife too?
Re:Stop multi-tasking! (Score:4, Funny)
(bonus points if you're actually in the car)
Re:Stop multi-tasking! (Score:4, Funny)
he is a slashdotter... bonus points if he actually leaves his parent's basement :)
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Maybe we'll get lucky and the car will drive itself?
How is that lucky? You know, there are some of us who just enjoy driving. (You can tell. We're the ones with manual transmissions.)
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Depend on the car. If you ahve a manual and drive a sedan, you either can't afford a manual, or you have choses a pathetic way to show you love to drive.
\
I love to drive. Everything about it. When I am* traffic, it seldom bothers me unless I am late. I love going fast. I'm one of those freaks where a passenger can ask me what vehicles are around my car and I can answer them correctly without taking my eyes off the road.
I went to 2 driving schools, can do a 'bootlegger', take a curve, know when to brake, whe
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Personally, I look forward to the day when cars drive themselves through rush hour traffic, and all I have to do is have some tea, read the newspaper, and enjoy the scenery.
That's fine. I'm waiting for my Pony and a Matter Compiler.
In the meantime, sit down, shut up and drive.
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Actually it's called a bus. Or you could have a cab, limo, rickshaw, commuter train, sedan chair (we have to do something with the unemployed), etc.
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It's funny how pissed the Bus Driver gets when you take his seat.
Strip Club (Score:4, Funny)
In local news, police are struggling to deal with the startling increase in traffic around local area strip clubs. Apparently the new "augmented reality" displays in the new cars are showing 30 second previews of their wares.
Re:Stop multi-tasking! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask yourself, why do people have to die in huge multi-car pileups [wikipedia.org]? There is no reason your car shouldn't have radar-augmented vision.
(And no, simply asking "why don't people just slow down?" does not fix this problem. The pileup begins when somebody does exactly that!)
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I don't know if it would really help.
The thing that leads to multicar pileups is cars are driving at such a speed and in such proximity that it is actually impossible to stop in time. I think even if the system automatically engaged the brakes (and assuming the guy behind you has the same system) .. you'd still get a crash in most cases.
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The thing that leads to multicar pileups is cars are driving at such a speed and in such proximity that it is actually impossible to stop in time. I think even if the system automatically engaged the brakes (and assuming the guy behind you has the same system) .. you'd still get a crash in most cases.
Other response indicated poor visibility is a major factor in pile-ups; I wanted to also add: with self-driving vehicles they would also communicate, and rapidly. So, for those cars which have available space to the right (breakdown lane) or possibly left (shoulder before barrier, on a highway), "every other car" could peel off into that space, giving more space behind for those cars to come to a stop without colliding.
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I'm still hopeful. Look at rear-facing backup cameras, they're useful, safe as far as I know, and don't have ads inserted into them.
Maybe too optimistic, but I wonder if ad-support for everything isn't due to swing the other way. At some point the little "pay" you're receiving for watching ads just isn't worth it. And "social" or location-aware ads, sure there's some extra effectiveness, b
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Are you insane? pay attention to the road? Next you will suggest I drive in a safe and courteous manner.
How un-american of you!
Stupidity knows no bounds (Score:4, Insightful)
Get out of jail free cards for everyone, guys! Just claim the HUD malfunctioned and gave you a seizure (or simply obscured your view) if you happen to run over some pedestrian.
Who's to say it ain't so?
Re:Stupidity knows no bounds (Score:4, Insightful)
The same people who won't let you get away with claiming that your brakes malfunctioned?
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It's easy to verify that after the fact though. Without some recording of the windshield activity it would be very difficult or impossible to prove that the windshield didn't go black for a second.
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There you go, all activity will be recorded. Even now there black-box like devices in some car, the monitoring will have to be more extensive.
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Excellent. I want it all recorded. And I insist on my 4th Amendment rights to privacy in my "papers and effects", as well as my 5th Amendment rights not to be forced to incriminate myself. So I can reveal the recordings to defend myself, but nobody can force me to allow them to be used against me.
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Bingo!
Yes, the discussion should stop being about being tracked, it should be about your rights. People need to realize everything is going to be recorded one way or another. Fight to keep your 4th and 5th amendments rights regarding data.
PLEASE.
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Who's to say it ain't so?
the 3tb black box running locked down firmware logging everything due to your warranty conditions, friendly police office/insurance/garage company will just jack in via the Ford/Gm API on his smartphone app and voila a complete replay of your last 90days driving, complete with video output from the front/rear cams, GPS position, in car audio monitoring, driver head position, external/internal temp, driver eyes open/closed, speed, revs, brake position, door status, passenger numbers,
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You paint an awfully optimistic picture of automotive black-boxes. Current ones capture a substantial amount of data regarding sensor readouts and human inputs (usually using a sliding time window), but are often only readable by the car manufacturer using custom hardware and software. Even law enforcement agencies have to get the car manufacturer to take the black box and give them data from it.
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"I didn't see them" is good enough, even if you've killed someone.
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No it's not good enough in most jurisdictions. "Vehicular manslaughter" is the conviction when the defense is "I didn't see them", but you should have.
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Thing is...the thing that makes the HUD also has a camera as part of it's system. The camera will record what you were doing.
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False.
Thump! (Score:5, Funny)
And here's the Facebook page of that pedestrian you just ran over.
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And here's the Facebook page of that pedestrian you just ran over.
for gods sake somebody mod parent up to 5
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Why not just give five more weight?
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And here's the Facebook page of that pedestrian you just ran over.
Had I known beforehand he had had a Facebook page, I would have mashed the accelerator to the floor.
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The modern version of that old Looney Tunes "cars of tomorrow" short.
"This car has a glass floor so that if you run someone over, you can see if he was a friend of yours!"
Joe Q. Pedestrian's status (Score:2)
BRB, just got hit by a car.
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This reminds me of cloud computing before it was called such. On demand computing was the term, now it's cloud ....
Same thing here, I remember seeing this car dash 'augmented reality' on Beyond 2000 just a different name. Just goes to show how slow the car industry is at bringing out new features ...
put your pencils down (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop doing this and make my car drive itself first..thx
Seriously I need that sort of thing like I need another whole in my head. Make my be a better car, not try to turn it into a smartphone.
You want to augment my reality...make some sunglasses that do...make my eyes better.
Re:put your pencils down (Score:5, Funny)
Another whole what in your head? Spelling and grammar correction subsystem?
Re:put your pencils down (Score:5, Funny)
Another whole what in your head? Spelling and grammar correction subsystem?
I believe you can make another whole in someone's head with a whandgun.
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Re:put your pencils down (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought that between them the DARPA challenge entrants pretty much had that one sorted? Admittedly the regulatory process to get them on the roads will be long and arduous, for good reason (for once), but the tech's looking good.
Right. The tech is all settled out, just like Thorium Cycle Reactors, holographic storage and hydrogen powered cars. A few prototypes do not an entire technological infrastructure make. It's going to be a long time before you can cruise down the Freeway maxed out on Ecstasy and Caffeine, mindlessly updating your Facebook page and Twittering about the asshole in front of you.
Oh. Wait.
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If by long time you mean 8-10 years, then you are correct.
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As I pointed out in another post, why not take a bus?
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Because the bus is expensive and doesn't necessarily always run ontime or otherwise. Before I quit the job before last I had to be downtown early on Sunday mornings and the bus wasn't running at that time of day. I would have to either show up at work like 2 hours early or find some other mode of transportation.
Also, for the cost of the bus around here one could drive a motorcycled. And also fuck them for the cost. In the time it took the rate to go from 85 cents to $2.50 for adults during peak hours, the r
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Buses are safer to ride in than cars. So if you add in the value of your life, a bus is a tremendous bargain. For $2.50 a ride, you're buying much greater chances of getting there alive, albeit more slowly and inconveniently.
What's more, buses are in fact vastly more economical modes of transport than are cars. If you commute, say, 10 miles to work every day, you're probably burning about a gallon a day, maybe less, maybe more depending on your vehicle and stop-and-go patterns. So you're spending about $
Re:put your pencils down (Score:4, Interesting)
You really had to stretch t make the 2.50 sound like a deal.
More likely to get sick, robbed, injured or delayed on a bus. So if you value your health, you would never ride a Bus, hell you are paying 2.50 to have people make you sick.
Funny, I drive 12 miles to work. If gas break 4.50, and bus fair doesn't go up, I would break even. Yes, that include maintenance. and the INCLUDE my work paying a percentage of the fair.
I also have the perk of getting to work in 15 minute instead of 90 minutes.
"But your car also requires thousands of dollars a year of insurance, " what are you, a manic? insurance for 2 vehicles cast my just under 1000 dollars. and since I can't take the bus everywhere, I would STILL have to pay this.
"maintenance"
How much do you thin it cost to maintain a vehicle? I spend 100 dollars on maintenance last year. This year I will hit 100K miles. So it will be and addition 450 dollars. Unless I do it myself.
". Probably maintenance will be minimal in the first year or so, but averaged over 8-10 years you'll be spending between $500 and $1000 a year to fix stuff,"
WTF? have you ever owned a car? I have two cars, both bought in 2001. I have had 1(one) expensive incident, and that was because the mechanic put the wrong fluid in the transmission. Maybe that's the benefit of buying American, reliability is outstanding.
" and plus all that collision insurance which is much higher at first, "
no it isn't.
"When you spend $20 to replace your wipers, that's several bus rides right there.
I replace my wipers about every 3 years. They cost 8 bucks.
" Whereas, as a bus passenger, you can read, surf over 3G, or sleep, "
When I take the bus, it's packed full of people who can't afford a car, standing room only, and the jostling make it nearly impossible to read. And I would not sleep on a bus, even if I could.
It doesn't mater, because the bus turns my 15 minute drive into a 90 minute ride. So I have and extra 2.5 hours to do stuff.
AS a side note, when gas was high, they raise the fair, but when the gas price lowered they didn't lower the fair. Then the next time gas spike to the same spot as the previous spike, they raised the fare, and blamed gas prices. Again they didn't lower it when gas price went down.
Since I have a car made the millenium, I get over 20 miles to the gallon.
napping on the way to work... (Score:2)
Thats why I drive! God knows what would happen if I fell asleep on public transportation. I'm hoping these car sharing services catch on here so I can have a fresh bed every day.
ps: "God" is used here as a figure of speech, not as an inflammatory gesture towards the fringes of the deity continuum. This postscript is meant as the inflammatory gesture to those humourless clowns.
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Each one of those individually is a deal breaker. Buses are fine as long as you keep in mind that they are a niche form of transportation.
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Yeah, make it like KITT!!!!
Wave your hand? (Score:2)
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As Jay Leno quipped years ago, when WAP was making it possible to show pr0n on your cell phone:
"I was hoping to keep at least ONE hand on the wheel".
We'll be hoping to keep at least one EYE on the road pretty soon. Like I need to know when that bridge up ahead was built. Sheesh.
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I doubt it. a HUD isn't likely to allow you to take your eyes off the road any more than the current system does. In fact it's likely to keep your eyes on the road as the legitimate functions that would take your eyes off the road could be integrated into the display. The main thing that takes my eye off the road is the speedometer and checking my mirrors. The mirrors aren't likely to get any help from a HUD, but the speedometer is.
Lets just focus on Driving. (Score:3, Insightful)
Quoting the article- "Simply point your hand at them, and the icons open to show real-time information: when that bridge over there was built, what band is playing at that nightclub on the left,"
This might be entertainment for the people sitting in the backseat - it might even be informative for kids.
This would definitely be a major nuisance for me if I were driving. Don't get me wrong – I am not against technology – but I also believe that there are some places where technology can be a hindrance and IMO this is one of them.
Yes. (Score:2)
i hear people are going to their jobs in paris by boarding the fast trains from bordeaux ffs. in usa, you can just get to your job from your house in the same time length.
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please (Score:4, Insightful)
Mass transit has been a world wide failure
keep such american bullshit in america.
100 million people are using mass transit comfortably and safely in japan. many more, in europe. in europe, the standards for mass transportation varies depending on country, but in japan, there is no such variance. fast trains are a feature of life there. even in germany, where 200 km/h heavy luxury cars and a culture of expensive highways are present, mass transportation is much more convenient as long as there is a mass transport reaching the destination you want.
dont pose shitty opinions as facts or statements next time. or, keep them in america. it is stupid to drive to a destination by going through all the hassles and effort instead of arriving there by swinging your arms about as if in your back garden with a mass transport vehicle. it is you americans' fault that you let mass transportation to be neglected, and your metros, undergrounds have became hellholes of crime and shit. and dont even get me started on amtrak.
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I know, I tried to take those trains daily, but was thwarted when the concorde stopped flying, also when my CC issuer said it wouldn't lend me any more money.
and ? (Score:2)
Augmented pedestrians (Score:2)
Based on the headline "augmented reality," I assumed it would be used for things like highlighting on the windshield pedestrians with a bright outline, given that pedestrians are invisible to drivers since they are thin and vertical in a visual field cluttered with thin and vertical poles. Little did I know it was just a HUD for Q codes.
Re:Augmented pedestrians (Score:4, Insightful)
Highlighting pedestrians and other features, particularly at night, would actually be really useful. There are a lot of things at night or during heavy rain or snow that can be picked up visually, eventually, but are challenging for humans. (Likewise for road signs at dusk.)
KITT first please (Score:2)
What we need is smarter cars not more "Stuff" going on in the windshield. (besides KITT would have hacked into the restaurant and gotten you that reservation before you got within 2 blocks of it).
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What we need is smarter people.
Most drivers can't even deal with "reality" (Score:3)
. . . "augmented reality" would be too much for them to handle.
Unfortunately, they won't notice it until things go "crash!"
And then claim that it was the car's fault.
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if it means removing routinely distracted drivers from the gene pool - i think this is something i can support MS on.
A likely story. (Score:4, Insightful)
Car manufacturers aren't exactly known for making good user interfaces (apart from the vehicle's primary controls).
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Head-Up Displays are double edged swords (Score:5, Informative)
In reality, the auto companies and their partners in university labs have been doing work research on HUDs for a while. The augmented reality approach has been tried in research studies as a result of successes in the aviation community. However, there are huge differences between augmented reality for cars when comparing to planes and pedestrians. The point of this post is not that HUDs are bad or unlikely to succeed, but rather that the designers of trade show concepts are ignoring much of the existing research. The concepts in TFA are unlikely to be used for actual products due to safety issues. Expect simpler HUDs focused on safety oriented problems. Here are some of the safety problems:
First, cars tend to hit things quicker. This is a crude point about recovery time, but a major one.
Second, there is considerably more variation in scene brightness due to driving speeds and local factors like buildings and trees. This leads to challenges perceiving the HUD imagery. Demos on trade show floors and labs usually gloss over this factor.
Perhaps the biggest concern is that there humans have perception errors due to the way our brains integrate augmented reality with the real world. First is the issue of cognitive capture. This is when you ignore the real world and just use the HUD for your information. For example, the collision warning system may highlight all the moving vehicles, so you learn to just look for the highlighting. Unlike a video game where every object is known, automotive sensing doesn't work 100% and objects will be missed. Cognitive capture is when you fail to perceive the kid running into the middle of the street because he wasn't highlighted. This can be demonstrated easily in the lab and many studies have concrete evidence of this.
The second perception problem is that HUDs can lead to misperception of distance. A HUD can only have one focal length while the real world has an infinite amount. Mismatches can lead to the driver misinterpreting the distance of an object. This isn't a problem when flying (everything is at optical infinity) or walking (you're moving to slow), but can cause problems when driving.
The third perception problem is masking. This is when the information about the new cafe covers the pedestrian crossing the street.
If your organization has access to this paper [nih.gov], it is an excellent primer on the issues. And yes, it was written in 1997.
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The fourth problem is that fighter pilots are generally selected from a subset of our population of individuals who are on the near-perfect end of the spectrum of human vision.
The same is not nearly so for those who are selected to drive automobiles. :(
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WTF? (Score:3)
I don't want that crap while I'm driving ... I want to know my route, if there's construction delays, if there's been an accident up ahead ... you know, stuff pertinent to the actual act of driving a motor vehicle.
If you start giving the average driver this kind of crap, you're going to get more road hazards as someone idiot is waving his hand at his windshield trying to pre-order a double, skinny, tall, machiato with extra foam before he gets to Starbucks (and, no, I don't care if any of those words actually apply to Starbucks) ... from what I can tell, most drivers can barely focus on the act of driving, they don't need their car to be some information/entertainment hub.
With more places moving ahead with distracted driving laws, do car companies really want to be putting in this kind of stuff? This just sounds really dangerous and stupid to me.
Sure, in-car GPS is a huge boost to driving ... but looking up when a bridge was constructed or making restaurant reservations? Sorry, but that's not something you should be doing while driving.
Perhaps helpful things (Score:4, Informative)
Not a bad idea, but.... (Score:2)
I can list dumb things too (Score:2)
"when that bridge over there was built" -- if your passenger told you that, you'd consider it the most boring fact possible, and you'd give them the finger.
"what band is playing at that nightclub on the left" -- because I'm going to drive around town for hours waiting for my car to name a band I've heard of? Not quite. I'm going to sit still, and decide which night club to go to. I'm not going to pull over on my way to a movie and instead go to a nightclub.
"whether that new café up the street has an
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"nd you'd give them the finger."
no every is is a rude SOB who only talks abut inane things.
" I'm not going to pull over on my way to a movie and instead go to a nightclub."
so you are on the way to the cinema, and your car tells you your favorite band is playing a 1 night only gig 3 blocks away.
Would you still go to the movie, or would you change plans?
You will be completely connected. You will get into your car, it will communicate with your smart devices, it will know your preferences, it will know your fa
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exactly, so they wouldn't talk to me about the bridge. that was my point.
you'd want me to cancel my movie tickets, tell my friends to go to hell, and go see my favourite band, so much my favourite that I didn't even know they were in town in the first place?
I didn't get into the car before buying tickets to the movie, I didn't get into the car having no idea where I was going.
if your friend doesn't have a phone, he won't have a smart car either.
restaurants don't have cooks that don't show up. movies shou
Here is the app I want. (Score:3)
Output: Home and work address, mobile number, and hack my way into his GPS instructions.
Thanks.
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I wrote that app, in '97
It cross indexed licenses plate information with white pages information. Both set were public information at the time.
It went on a laptop, and it worked great. we would drive around, randomly pick a license plate and get the person phone number and usually an address.
I could have made a couple of million. But I decided the bad things would out weigh the good, so I shelved it. Sometime, when I am trying to figure out how I am going to pay for my kids college, I wish I had sold the pr
I miss my ideal car (Score:2)
I don't really care about gadgets with exception of two-way radios (which are all user add-ons). My gripe is I hate the trends of car designs particularly shorter windows. I recently drove a new Acura (loaner while my older one was in for repair), it was scary. So many blind spots and reduced peripheral vision. It was like driving a bus or large truck, I had to constantly be aware of others approaching from behind. With a smaller car, you can quickly look to know surroundings before changing lanes especial
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That was a great car.
We need automated driving first (Score:2)
We need fully automated driving, so the vehicle occupant can concentrate on their web surfing, TV watching, game playing, and communications tasks. Really. Automated driving is already probably better than the bottom 20% of drivers, the ones who have most of the accidents.
It should be mandatory that if a car has any "infomatics" stuff that requires user attention, beyond a map display and music player, it has to also have, as a minimum, anti-collision radar tied to the brakes. (Some high-end cars alread
DUI? (Score:2)
Sounds illegal but what the hell...give me augmented reality over real reality any day!
What this is really about: More traffic jams (Score:2)
Reality #1) Population is exploding, especially in urban areas -- population density is increasing, and roads are not getting any better, in fact, they are getting worse.
Reality #2) There's no money to fix or improve roads, government spending is being cut like crazy, and on state and local levels, everyone is bankrupt, so there will be no improvements to roads or to public transit systems.
This will lead to greater and greater traffic snarls, especially during mass migration periods (i.e. Rush hour, holiday
Windshield Borders Dashboard (Score:2)
I'd rather glance at dashboard displays surrounding the windshield, so I don't have to move my head to see them through the steering wheel. If the car also had 360 cameras to drop the borders display to reveal anything detected traveling towards the car's cabin that the displays would block, the displays would only add to the safety. In fact such a feature would highlight moving risks, overall much safer than just the current windshield/dashboard config.
And put all driver controls on the steering wheel, sho
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How can I ensure I get the solid granite car every time I go out?
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Along with cyclists, pedestrians, other motor vehicles ... I'm just waiting for the day some idiot plows through a crosswalk because he was playing video games on his windshield.
Providing information not specifically relevant to actually driving just sounds like a really bad idea. Stick to information that can actually help, sure, but some of the examples cited in the summary just sound absurd. Finding a free table at a cafe? Not a good idea.
Hell,
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You choose a mode of transportation knowing full well your risk is higher, and you are hard to see, so Boo fucking Hoo.
Engrish with a PBH accent it think (Score:2)
what may have been meant is how are cell phone providers going to use this to Frack Over folks that drive across/ to close to a border??
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Not to mention watching the porn ads from the stripper joint you're driving by,
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Wouldn't it be better if you said 'Car. read me the manual to the vehicle' and it started doing so? That's the kind of stuff they are talking about.
As for ads you have to read? won't happen in any car that needs a driver, and you will be able to turn it off.