Toyota, like many car manufacturers out there at the moment has begun to realise that as safe and as sturdy as we can make cars, the problem in crashes is 90 per cent of the time, the driver. That’s why so many auto-makers are starting to build in technologies to their cars that take over from us at certain times.
With that in mind, Toyota has been showing off some of its new safety features that involve vehicle to vehicle communication, lane assistance and much much more. Check out the video bellow for a break down of some of the most important features.
For those that can’t watch the above video, it opens with Toyota making a pledge similar to Volvo, suggesting that it wants to eliminate road deaths in its vehicles entirely. To achieve that lofty goal, it’s introducing Toyota Safety Sense, a combination of tracking and obstacle detection technology that uses laser radar, cameras and a wave radar in different areas of the car. Together, these provide the vehicle’s onboard computer with a pretty detailed breakdown of what’s up ahead and can either give the driver a warning if a problem occurs, or react for them if there isn’t time.
Those actions can involve anything from stopping the car automatically if you’re likely to go into the back of another vehicle, or nudging you back into your lane if you happen to drift slightly while on the motorway. There’s also an auto-matic main-beam that will flick your lights on to their maximum illumination as long as there’s nobody in the other lane.
While Toyota admits that its technology won’t stop you if you’re travelling at higher speeds or if the technology doesn’t have enough time to react properly, it should still slow you down using assistive brakes and can therefore reduce the impact of an accident.
It won’t always take over though. The first choice in any potentially dangerous situation, will be to give the driver a warning. There is an onboard buzzer system, which will sound to warn you to get back in lane or to hit the brakes in the event of an impending accident. However, if you don’t react in time or simply ignore it, the car can correct your track for you.
These are all just basic Totoya Sense options though. If you make sure your new car comes with Safety Sense P, it will have even more impressive abilities, allowing it to detect pedestrians that may be about to cross the road, again giving you a warning and applying the brakes if needed. Like before, it doesn’t guarantee to stop the car unless it’s going under 20 miles per hour, but it will at least reduce the speed with which a person is hit and therefore makes it a less catastrophic accident.
Radar based cruise control also means you don’t have to change speed on the motorway when following another vehicle. With this smart control, you can tail them for your entire journey if you like, speeding up when they do and slowing down if they need to as well.
