New Smartphone Tech To Alert Pedestrians: 'You Are About To Be Hit By a Car' 136
cartechboy writes "Usually, smartphones are a problem for humans transporting themselves — a massive distraction. But Honda is working on a way to use smartphones to protect pedestrians from bad drivers. The 'V2P' (Vehicle-to-Pedestrian) tech uses a smartphone's GPS and dedicated short range communications (DSRC) to warn drivers when a pedestrian say, steps out from behind a parked car. So the driver sees a dashboard message warning of an approaching pedestrian (which also notes whether said walker is using phone, texting or listening to music — which sort of shouldn't matter as you, uhm, brake.) The lucky pedestrian gets an alert on their phone telling them there's a DSRC-equipped car coming – that's if, say, actually looking at the road isn't telling you that already."
The lesson here is to always keep your eyes on your smartphone when you're crossing the street. If you get an alert, stop where you are and read it! Relatedly, there's another phone app in development to help you avoid gunfire.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
More blame culture crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a crazy idea.... How about letting the pedestrian take responsibility for stepping into a busy road without looking first? ...actually you'd think it would be a self-rectifying problem through natural selection.
Protecting pedestrians from bad drivers (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't "protect" the pedestrian by telling the bad driver to activate his brakes. Instead, automatically activate the brakes, take the bad driver out of the loop.
This is similar to my gripe about people who think that a horn is a useful safety device -- as if the guy who you are beeping at is going to listen the horn, figure out that it applies to him, and figure out what he is doing wrong, fast enough to make a difference. Better to simply assume that he's an idiot, and work around him.
Fair enough to joke about this crap (Score:4, Insightful)
But on a serious note. I am seeing way to many hairbrain schemes where drivers attention on the road is drawn to a screen where graphical information about potential dangers is displayed.
I am willing to put money on it that in every single case the results of the distraction causes more harm then it prevents.
How the hell can people be banned from using a mobile phone in a car but it is perfectly fine to use Satnav, radio or a gazillion new doodads. Each of them far more distracting then a conversation on the phone.
I while back I even saw an IPad application that uses the camera to interpret the car's dashboard ( http://www.gizmag.com/audi-a3-augmented-reality-manual/28693/ [gizmag.com] )
Madness.
Re:On the iPhone it will be... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they need to play irritating music with a DO YOU WANT THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE DISPLAYED? By the time they figure out how to dismiss it their genes will be out of the pool.