From wings to wingdings, the automotive industry has long been obsessed with adding technology to its products, often simply for the sake of adding new technology to its products. Two such “innovations” are coming down the pipeline from Honda and Audi, the first a camera system to offer a birds-eye view of your vehicle and the second a system which communicates with traffic lights. Automotive News (sub) brings news of the Honda system, which is set to debut o the J-market redesign of the Honda Odyssey minivan. The system would offer a bird’s-eye view of the car to help with parking and visibility in blind corners and intersections. Four wide-angle cameras placed around the vehicle offer the Gran Tourismo-like option of viewing your vehicle in the third person, theoretically making it easier to drive in congested urban environments. Similar technology has already been developed by Nissan. From Audi comes word of a new system known by the annoying “Travolution” moniker, which combines the terms “travel” and “convolution.” According to Automobile magazine, the system communicates with traffic signals and tells drivers how fast they should drive to minimize their time at red lights. After spending two years and 1.2m Euros to develop the system, Audi Audi has produced an A5 and an A6 Avant capable of communicating with three traffic lights in its hometown of Ingolstadt, Germany. That’s 400k Euros per light, in case you’re wondering. Undeterred by such expense, Audi plans on expanding the pilot project to include 20 cars and 50 lights. Automobile sums up its chances of a US debut with snark-laden terseness. “There is no word yet as to when such a system could migrate to the United States, although ‘never’ might be an appropriate guess.” And technology marches on.
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The traffic light thing would be great if it gave you 2 speeds…..the first being for getting there as the light just turns green and the second for just before the light turns yellow. In my town that would be 5mph and 60mph, respectively.
Better idea….hire a good traffic engineer…..or put in roundabouts
Why is the Audi thing supposedly better than just putting the technology in the lights themselves? You know, so this coordination will work with the other 99% of cars on the road.
I’d just settle for my metro area to have signals and cameras coordinated to maximize flow.
1996,
Living in an area hit by a hurricane has reminded me why traffic circles will not work here. The mix of polite and rude, aggressive and cautious, competent and ignorant was on full display here lately as the majority proved incapable of dealing with a broken traffic light.
The law here is to treat it as a 4 way stop, with cars yielding to their right such that the right of way travels around the intersection in a clockwise manner.
Instead, it was a circus.
We have a couple circles here, and they are hopeless even when there is little or no traffic using them.
Great idea in theory, not so good in practice.
Neither are really bad ideas, and as someone who’s suffered through watching my wife parallel-park, the first definitely gets my vote.
The second seems a little iffier. My hometown seems to have pretty reasonable light-time measures: I’ve noticed what look like little cameras atop the lights themselves, though I don’t know if they’re part of it, or if there’s sensors in the pavement. I do know I’ve rarely had to wait senselessly.
I’m an economist at heart and very poorly designed traffic patterns and lights are the bane of my existence. Audi’s system will never happen b/c of the lack of any standard here in Europe or the US.
Now my chance to rant – lights where I live are very, very poorly timed and designed. For instance:
– Cannot turn left on green at most lights
– Lights quickly turn for right turners stopping moving traffic instead when right turner could have merged safely 5 seconds later
– Turn too quickly for 1 car on a smaller road and stop moving traffic on busier road (need to hold smaller roads longer to allow busier road traffic through)
– Many lights hold you unnecessarily long while you watch another light 1/4 mile up the road cycle through and if you accelerate like a bat out of hell you can most of the time make it
– We do have roundabouts and they work great but you have to slow down every time which upsets people even though in the greater good it is more efficient and you’ll save much more time.
– Plus the idiot drivers who sit side by side not letting people pass (hell even on 2 lane roads when I’m towing I pull over to let a train of cars by as I don’t want to hold people up unnecessarily). Pass the car next to you and get the heck out of the way – even if no one is behind you.
…or put in roundabouts
If North Americans had any sense of lane discpline and shared road responsibility, sure. But they don’t. At all.
There’s three categories of drivers at roundabouts:
* People who have been to Europe and get the idea.
* People who shut down, put their hands over their eyes and hum until someone puts up a traffic light
* People who just peel into the circle–and oncoming traffic–without looking.
The Honda “Birds-eye” system is a bit over the top, but if you’ve ever driven (or parked) in Japan, you’ll notice two things:
1. The Japanese are anal-retentive about how accurately they park (9 times out of 10 they back in)
2. The parking spaces are incredibly tight (as are many roads)
Both cases could conceivably see benefit from the new technology. Come to think of it, so could we Yanks who can’t park an Impala in a spot suitable for a jumbo jet, much less a Suburban.
What we really need is a video camera on a retractable shaft – like a radio antenna, but longer. With this you could extend your camera to see over the truck in front of you to see what’s causing the traffic jam, and how far traffic is backed up.
jgholt:
I prefer backing into a spot because I don’t like backing out of it into traffic with ye-olde’ blind spots, etc. Just makes sense, IMO.
I think the birds-eye view will just conflusterfuckintimidate people even more, esp. the ones who can’t multitask past their own breathing. Oh yeah, and it’s more crap to break down in your car.
I’d like to have the birds eye view for parallel parking. That would be better than putting a hood ornament on my Civic so I can tell where the front end ends.
In the local artificial “downtown” street in the town I live in, in SOFLA people routinely take up 2 spots when they parallel park. If on one stretch there is enough room for 15 cars to park, there will be at the most 11 cars parked there.
Maybe it can be chalked up to the old people driving Cadillac’s that are bigger than their condo’s, but honestly young or old, people on this side of the earth can’t park to save their lives.
And I won’t even mention how they drive…!
Conslaw:
Take your periscope camera idea one step further and add a laser to vaporize the offender. Then demand that everyone learn to drive like me or get blasted.
wow you guys arent wrong very often but this time you are
“Two such “innovations” are coming down the pipeline from Honda and Audi, the first a camera system to offer a birds-eye view of your vehicle”
first avalible on 2008 infiniti ex35, now also avalible on the 2009 fx35/50
http://www.infiniti.com/ex/key_features/technology.html
oh and this is from your review of the ex
an
“Around View” parking monitor (in case you need to park sideways)”
so not so new .
@ psarhjinian
IIRC, the little cameras on top of the lights are for detecting emergency vehicles. They sense the flashing lights approaching and change the signals to make it safer for the e.v. to go through.
Some people have gotten in trouble mounting strobes on their cars to get the lights to change. Legally, it’s kind of iffy.
I can’t wait for the day when Google offers real-time satellite view. Pipe it right into your Nav and you’ll have better than bird’s-eye.
Hmm…can we be very far away from electronic transmitters that purposely stall your car as you approach a yellow light so you can’t run it….or intersection cameras that directly debit your bank account when they sniff out a violation….or purposely extend the green lights for luxo-vehicles whose owners have the bucks to purchase a “free pass” so they’re not unduly delayed by red lights?….glad this is just fantasy….or is it? (Twilight Zone theme plays in the background).
Hmm…can we be very far away from electronic transmitters that purposely stall your car as you approach a yellow light so you can’t run it……
Don’t worry about this one…you would cut off revenue, and revenue is the purpose for all this. Safety certainly isn’t the purpose. Fleece the sheep, but try not to kill them…you want them alive so you can fleece them again. And again. and again….
Roundabouts are awesome. Yeah I spent three years living in Europe courtesy of the US Navy. Insert clueless American and they don’t work as well. I say build more and the clueless will learn or they will get old and quit driving and the next generation will get it.
Both gadgets sound pretty good. I seldom ever have to parallel park though.
The traffic lights around here favor the gas stations. Start, accelerate, and then ride the brakes to the next red light. I swear I pass through 7 lights each way to/from work and get caught by all of them every day.
Raises wear and tear on my car, wastes fuel and makes pollution. I would much rather use round-abouts where I could slow and then go on without stopping.
Dad told me story about a guy in a pickup that Dad was following one day. Pickup truck got to the round-about near my parent’s house in Chattanooga and stopped. Didn’t know what to do. Sat there for a good ten seconds thinking about it and waiting his turn. Finally the dude punches it and drove straight over the center island of the round-about with squealing tires and catching air. Idiot…
If round-abouts can frustrate the average idiot American driver into staying home more or educating themselves a little then I’m all for installing roundabouts at all intersections.