Most manufacturers have some kind of safety initiative and Nissan’s Vision Zero isn’t that different. Its goal is to eliminate Nissan cars from fatal and serious-injury accidents, or rather do everything it can to put cars on the road that minimize the possibility of a Nissan getting in a potentially fatal accident. Absolute zero fatal or serious-injury accidents is unrealistic; getting as close as possible requires many safeguards, and not just more airbags. Nissan has to bring systems online that avoid accidents altogether. Autonomous Emergency Steering System is one of those safeguards that spawned. Not surprisingly, what it does is pretty self-explanatory. How it does it requires more than three words.
Cameras and a combination of radar and laser scanners paint a constantly evolving picture of the car’s surroundings. An onboard computer processes the data, continuously searching for potential accidents and for safe, obstruction-free escape paths. When an accident is imminent and the computer determines it’s unavoidable by braking alone, the motor in the electric-assist power steering rack acts on its own with no input from the driver. (This system—as evidenced by its use with an electric-assist power steering rack—is completely unrelated to the steer-by-wire system Nissan also recently introduced.)
- First Drive: 2013 Audi Q5
- Comparison Test: 2011 Volkswagen Touareg V6 TDI vs. 2011 Touareg Hybrid
- Comparison Test: 2012 BMW X5 M vs. 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8, 2012 Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG, 2012 Porsche Cayenne Turbo
We experienced the system from the passenger seat of a Nissan Leaf that had been fitted with all the extra sensors needed. In both scenarios—one with a pedestrian that wanders into traffic and another simulating suddenly stopped traffic—where a steering intervention was necessary, lights illuminate in the instrument panel and an audible alert sounds to warn the driver of a potential collision before the steering wheel jerks one way and then makes a small correction in the opposite direction. Nissan said the system will not override the commands of a driver. So if John Doe Driver has a steadfast grip on the wheel, the resistance will be enough to override the autonomous maneuver; a human-knows-best fail-safe.
As the system still is under development and a few years from production there is no defined rollout plan, although we expect Autonomous Emergency Steering to be optional on Infinitis and Nissans within a few years.
Read full story »Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/caranddriver/blog/~3/pIUoCShWDQw/
Bruce Halford Jim Hall Duncan Hamilton Lewis Hamilton David Hampshire
No comments:
Post a Comment