Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

Would you drive safer if your car gave you gruesome warnings? [w/poll]

Engineers at the Fukuoka Institute of Technology in Japan are trying to come up with a new way to encourage people to drive safer by using scare tactics. Rather than a flashing red light or beeping tone to warn drivers of potential crashes, this system would be more proactive by warning drivers if they are driving too fast for conditions or following too close to the car in front of them. It would also give feedback warnings such as "You would die right now if you were in a crash" – an example given by New Scientist.

The safety system uses radar, sonar and lasers to monitor how the car is being driven, and if risky driving habits are detected, it would respond with a more evocative and emotional warning to scare the driver into safer habits. Would such visual or audible warnings change how you drive?

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/09/w...me-warnings-w/

Aron9000

I wouldn't buy a car equipped with such bull****.

mmarshall

The most effective way I can think of to get people to drive safer is not necessarily with in-car gimmicks, but simply to require them to spend a typical Friday or Saturday night in the Emergency Room of a major hospital....on a night when people are drinking, driving aggressively, and/or drag-racing. That experience should convince them more than anything taught in an ad or classroom. They will see, first-hand, the results of stupidity behind the wheel...and it's not pretty. This is something I've long advocated for teen-agers and those first getting their drivers' licenses.....why states don't require it is beyond me, although, of course, in some parts of the country, the nearest hospital is not always close by.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

I dunno about the car, but a wife sure can scream and yell profanities that would distract me lol

mmarshall

You speak from experience?

Let me guess what she does for a living.

LeX2K

To borrow an idea from a famous magazine, replace the airbag with a sword.

mmarshall

The first-generation American airbags did, on a number of occasions, actually hurt or kill people....especially infants and small children. That was because American regulations, unlike those in Europe, required the airbags to fire instaneously, with great force....on the assumption that people in America weren't wearing their belts, or weren't wearing them properly, and the bag would have to do all or most of the restraining. In Europe, people do a better job of wearing their belts, and the air-bag rules there allowed a slower, less-powerful filling of the bag. Of course, since then, much progress has been made in both the bags themselves and in the variable-sensor systems to detect body-weight and seat-position.