Traffic safety is one of the major concerns of car manufacturers. Through the years, different active and passive safety features have been developed by automakers to protect their consumers in cases of crashes. While there are a lot of safety features for the occupants of vehicles, there seems to be a shortage of vehicle safety features concerned with the safety of pedestrians.
Protecting a pedestrian from severe injuries or even death as a result of being hit by a car is an issue being addressed by the Japanese car manufacturer Nissan. Currently, the only safety features integrated into vehicles aimed at pedestrian safety are bumpers which are specially designed to absorb energy and would then lessen the impact when a vehicle comes in contact with a pedestrian. These bumpers reduce the risk of severe injuries to pedestrians accidentally hit by vehicles.
Recently, Nissan announced that they are developing a pedestrian safety feature which would be based on cellular communications. The company reported that they are in the process of studying a cutting edge Intelligent Transportation System or the ITS which uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) to determine the location of pedestrians which might be accidentally hit by the car.
The car company also further announced that the new system currently being developed will be using the next 3G cellular communications system. The said system will be used to pinpoint the location of a pedestrian and its relative risk of being hit by the car.
Nissan, known for the dependability of their vehicles and stock parts such as and other components reported that the system will come in handy on a blindspot situation where the drivers' vision is limited. Nissan reported that the system will be tasked to collect information concerning the position, speed, and other data regarding the car and the pedestrian. An onboard computer will then consider these data and warns the driver if there is a risk of hitting a pedestrian. The warning will alert the driver to take evasive actions to avoid hitting the person sensed by the system.
Although the safety system looks good in theory, there are still a lot of issues that needs to be addressed. Nissan announced that they will be studying in which situations that drivers should be warned. Information needed for the system to properly warn the driver includes the speed of the vehicle, the position of the pedestrian, and the distance between the car and the nearest pedestrian. These data are just some of the data needed by the system. Nissan is also on the process of looking for the most effective warning medium that will be used with the system.
