Road Tech

Technology — cell phones and texting technologies to be precise — gets a bad rap when it comes to safety while driving. Of course, it’s not the technology that’s unsafe-it’s people. Thus a number of states and the federal government have moved to curtail drivers from dialing or texting while driving.

While trying to stamp out unsafe use of technology, it’s important to keep in mind that technology can be used to make driving safer, too. Some of the exciting technologies available include:

Blind Spot and Cross-Traffic Detection: Blind spot detection features identify people, other vehicles, or objects within vehicles’ blind spots and provide an instant warning. Similarly, cross-traffic detection systems detect vehicles, people or objects in a vehicle’s path while backing out of a parking space and alert the driver.

Driver Recognition System: This allows multiple drivers to program various vehicle settings including seat positions, mirror positions, and climate control and stereo settings that can all be activated when the driver enters the vehicle.

Night Vision System: This provides a high-beam image of the road ahead, without distracting other drivers, using an infrared light beam that is invisible to the human eye. An on-board camera is used to capture images up to 500 feet away that are then presented on a display in the vehicle’s cockpit.

Parking Assist System: Parking assist systems help drivers park backwards or parallel park using a built-in computer and small sensors located at the rear of the vehicle. The parking movements can be done automatically by the vehicle.

As promising and exciting as these technologies are, car makers have to make them available and people have to know about them in order for their safety benefits on the road to be realized. According to a new Harris Interactive survey, not many people know about them. Familiarity with advanced vehicle intelligent sensing features is very low among American drivers, with fewer than one in 10 indicating they are very familiar with the features.

However, despite low familiarity, more and more drivers indicate they are likely to purchase these features for their next new vehicle, according to the same Harris Interactive poll. Though only six percent indicate they are extremely or very familiar with blind spot and cross-traffic detection systems, there is obvious interest in these features, with one-quarter (24 percent) of drivers saying they would be extremely or very likely to purchase this for their next vehicle. The same percentage would consider buying a night vision system. Twenty-two percent said they would be interested in buying a driver recognition system.

“Although these technologies are not well known today, expect many of them to become commonplace over the next few years,” says Dave Pulaski, vice president of Automotive and Transportation for Harris Interactive. “Once consumers learn about these features and their benefits, they will clamor for them.”

All of this suggests that if automakers and suppliers educated consumers more about these technologies, interest may increase. Perhaps some cell phone calls and texting messages from the insurance industry offering discounts would provide some encouragement for everyone.