Research into possible assistance by the car’s computers along with various sensors in aiding drivers when driving in bad weather is underway to make the roads safer. Funded by Veridan and Honda, the researchers at The University of Buffalo are working to perfect and prototype a system which would have some built-in reflexes into the car allowing it to assist the driver in case of a skid or slide. Many drivers still get into accidents when ice, rain and other weather impair the usual driving environment.
The system would involve the car’s computer which would have some pre-loaded reflex routines that tackle most driving situations, sensors that will be embedded in every part of the vehicle and active assist systems much like ABS assists you in maneuvers on slick roads. There is a required level of skill that is involved in order to recover from a spin such as which way to turn the wheel to counter the spin and how fast the driver has to turn it to effectively avoid disaster. The braking, engine, steering and many more parts of the car would assist the driver in making that critical split-second decisions on which way to turn the wheel and how much braking and engine power would be required. The parameters that would be built into these proposed systems are being tried out in simulators to obtain repeatable and standard results.
Researchers have found that the best and least invasive assistance technique can be achieved by audible warnings which allow the driver to keep his eyes on the road to allow better understanding of the situation. The new system would supplement but not totally take over the control of the vehicle for the best and fastest computer in the world is still the human brain which makes hundreds of thousands of calculations from visual cues and other sensory gathered information to allow the proper technique to be executed. The driver is still the most dangerous part of a motor vehicle for even with all the advanced technologies and safety systems that have been developed; the person is still the biggest threat to himself. Proper training and stimuli can help make a person more focused on his driving and lessen the accidents that have become more common on the streets of today.
Written by Marcel on September 24, 2010 | 1 Comment
Driving in winter is NOT a fun thing to do, as many of you will attest to. One danger is skidding. You may be driving at a reasonable speed and being as careful as you can be, but a stray patch of ice just might throw you out of control. YOU may know how to control a skid, but do your (driving) family members know how to handle it? Here is some information that you can share with them, especially your teenagers.
What do you do when the rear wheels lose traction?
First, keep your eyes on the road. Don’t panic and look elsewhere, and continue to take the direction you were originally taking. Remember to turn the wheel towards the path that you want to go.
Second, do NOT hit the brakes! This is probably going to be the initial reaction of an inexperienced driver, but train yourself not to do it. Hitting the brakes will only make you lose control of the car more.
Third and last, do not stop steering in the direction you need to go. This will help avoid the rear wheels skidding in the other direction.
Now what if the front wheels skid?
You basically have to maintain the same presence of mind as well as follow the steps above. The important thing to remember is that you wait for the wheels to regain their grip on the road and not to brake or accelerate while doing so. Bottom line: be in control of yourself and the situation.
Written by Marcel on January 29, 2010 | 2 Comments
Texting and driving has been an issue for the longest time. Ever since using the mobile phone for more than making voice calls became a common thing, texting behind the wheel has proven to be a serious problem. I suppose one factor is that many people do not see texting while driving as deadly as drinking and driving. It just seems to be “safe” and not really dangerous – at least to those who have not really thought about it or to those who have not had a bad experience.
In Great Britain, though, they are taking this very very seriously. There is this Texting While Driving PSA that is currently airing in the country, and it is quite graphic! It can be quite disturbing, actually. Here, take a look for yourself.
I hadn’t gotten through halfway of the video and I already felt as if there were a huge thing crushing my chest. The sound of metal on metal, the girl’s screams, the blood…this is only a video but it really had an effect on me. Other viewers feel pretty much the same way. As a matter of fact, I read that there are some people who have been complaining about the graphic nature of the clip; that it is way too much for the general public. I think that it should be shown to anyone who can drive. If that means showing the video to a 16-year-old, then so be it! If a person can take the responsibility of driving and potentially placing his life (and the life of others) at risk, then he can take this video. What do you think?
Written by Marcel on September 9, 2009 | 2 Comments
Traveling to foreign destinations has never been easier than it is today. Worldwide tourism has experienced a boost in the recent years and more and more people are finding it commonplace to visit a country outside of their home country. One of the best ways to discover a strange land is to get a vehicle of your own and drive around the city streets or country roads. Yet one thing is important – you have to know what the requirements of the country are with regard to driving permits or licenses.
More often than not, the common perception is that once you hold an international driving license, you are good to drive anywhere in the world. This is normally true, but in some cases, the local government might as for some additional paperwork.
Case in point: Michael Elliott of Cleveland, Tennessee bought an International Driving Permit from AAA for $15 for a trip to Grenada. He got there, confident that he had everything he needed to drive in the country. However, the local government required him to buy a Grenadian driving permit.
According to Christopher Elliot, the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveller, this case is not uncommon. In fact, many foreign destinations have their own particular rules when it comes to visitors driving in their locale. As such, the responsibility lies in the motorists’ hands – you have to do research of your own to determine what you need to do in order to be able to drive. A little work to get the right information will save you a lot of trouble.
It is not hard to known when you encounter a flat tire. Normally you would notice a part of your car in a slanted position or perhaps would notice that your steering wheel is hard to maneuver. In some cases, you may even see that you can no longer drive at the usual pace you drive and chances are you have encountered a flat in one of your tires.
The first thing you have to do is to pull over. Assuming that you have the usual tire changing tools such as a tire wrench and the reliable car jack, it would be best to change your tires first before moving on to wherever you may be going.
Here are some tips to change you tire:
1. Prepare the tire changing tools:
a. Tire Wrench
b. Car Jack
c. Spare Tire
2. Take out you spare tire. Make sure you constantly have the tire pressure checked since even if they are not used, they are bound to lose some air while stocked.
3. Loosen the wheel bolts midway so that you will not have a hard time loosening them once you jack up your car.
4. Jack up the car at properly elevated levels. It would be wise to raise it a couple of inches higher than normal so it can be easier to install the spare tire. For safety reasons, it would be advisable to place your spare tire horizontally below the elevated portion of the car in cases where the jack may suddenly give way.
5. Proceed to completely loose the nuts and remove the tire.
6. Place the spare tire and try to tighten the bolts as much as you can. You don’t have tighten them that hard as you can do that once you put the car in its normal stance upon releasing the jack.
7. Tighten the bolts after you have taken out the jack.
8. Place your tire in place of where you got the spare tire and try to have it vulcanized immediately. You don’t want to run forever using that spare tire as it may give way also.
Written by Marcel on September 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
Here is a good tip for people who have to worry about the level of their gas these days. Apparently, it is now rare that we see people filling up their cars to the hilt, considering that the current oil price and economic crisis have become totally outrageous. Normally, people can manage the by the gallon fuel for their car but today, the price per gallon is no longer comfortable as before.
At times, you may even forget to fill up your car with gas and while many wait until they use up all the fuel of their car to the max, when your car flashes that gas pump light, chances are you will be panicking and looking for the nearest gas station to fill ‘er up.
While you gauge may be on the borderline E of your driver panel, don’t worry about it. There are occasions wherein gas stations may not be within sight. Usually, when you car fuel gauge is on the E line, you still have around 4 kilometers to spare. But rather than risk it, it would be best to try and do some adjustments just in case the next gas station is still far:
1. Avoid stepping longer on the accelerator and go with the flow.
2. Turn of air-conditioning for the meantime.
3. Try to drive at a conservative space. No sense in wasting gas if you are running low.
Just don’t panic when you see that blinking light on your dashboard. It is merely telling you that you forgot to put gas in your car!
Written by Marcel on September 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
A certain percentage of accidents these days stem from beating the red light. But how do you classify beating the red light? For one, if you are about to reach an intersection with the traffic light already in yellow, be civil enough to note that you are on the verge of actually trying to beat the red light. So what can possibly happen?
1. You can be caught and ticketed for “Beating the Red Light” by traffic enforcers
2. The degree of being hit or incurring an accident is high.
3. Possibly hitting pedestrians to which you will be meted a lot of charges outside that of traffic violations
If you enumerate these bullets, there is no positive thing to look forward to as far as they are concerned. They all clearly show that you are bound for trouble with the authorities and other than the discomfort of being caught, raising the degree of charges against you is a given factor.
There is nothing to prove if you beat a red light. If you are in a hurry you just have to face the fact that prior adjustments to reaching your destination or meeting must be made with time to spare. A car is not a solution to get you places fast and safe.
Your car can indeed get you to your point of destination quickly but it depends on the degree of driving you are undertaking. Try not to be like the fast-driving people in movies. They are scripted. If you should do that in the modern roads of today, accidents are waiting to happen to which you may not even see yourself driving anymore due to mishaps and mental impact of incurring such problems.
There has been much talk into the ability of tomorrow’s smart cars that have the capacity of augmenting the human driver at the steering wheel of all vehicles. While the driver may not be totally eliminated form the total driving experience, there are technologies in development and use that are designed to augment the driver’s abilities with respect to vision, reaction time and collision avoidance. Technologies in development like the ones currently being researched and proven by the Japanese car manufacturer Honda, their ASV and DSSS systems are designed to lay out the future of smart cars that talk to each other and communicate with traffic computers allowing them real time data acquisition form other vehicles.
Additions of vision augmentation such as the ones used by Mercedes that have built in IR emitters that are seen by an onboard camera that allows drivers to see in front of the vehicle and at the rear when parking avoiding hidden dangers that cannot be revealed even with current HID technologies. Adaptive lighting also used by newer Mercedes cars which has servos and sensors that maintains the most amount of light on the road and out of the face of drivers in oncoming vehicles is also making roads safer and better to drive. Blind corner detection which Mazda is developing is also to take part in the development of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) that would be the framework of tomorrow’s smart roads where cars and drivers are able to gain information form each other and directly form the traffic management people.
Technology has gone a long way in terms of improving the safety and ease at which we drive tomorrow’s cars but the question on how far we would allow these technologies to take over our vehicles is for us to say and many still feel uncomfortable at letting technology rule our lives. That’s why we still have pilots when planes can fly themselves without them and Ship Captains when current high-tech ships can sail on their own. The human ability to react and reason is still the best technology when it comes to risk analysis and no computer can top the intuitive human touch to date.
In the never ending story of how GPS has allowed drivers and travelers alike to get to their destinations faster and easier, another addition to the saga of the errant GPS and their likewise errant drivers. As in previous posts regarding GPS and their ability to go wrong (extremely wrong) and give wrong directions drivers in the UK have had their common sense so to speak driven out of them as they drive into bridge overhangs and other structures which were not taken into consideration by the GPS mapping systems. The article came to my attention from Gadzooki which has a post dated on the 18th of April which shows hilarious yet serious statistics of drivers running into bridges like the ones shown in Mr. Bean cartoons and movies. These drivers trust their high-tech GPS navigation devices so much they forget to keep their eyes on the road and mind structures their vehicles may encounter. GPS has indeed made driving a pleasure by giving the right directions and even telling us when and where to go but it would also be a good idea to consider and include real-time traffic and positional data (not forgetting to take into consideration the location of low lying bridges and structures that may not accommodate the various types of vehicles that are on the road) which is already in some advanced high-price units.
The UK is a growing market for GPS and various gizmos and gadgets are coming to the public being sold as aides to UK drivers. The advantage is that the tons of camera’s in and around major cities allows UK traffic authorities to provide up to date traffic information where the driver can select alternate routes. The growing number of vehicles on the roads of Britain are becoming more and more of a problem which results in gridlock and traffic exclusion schemes to select areas that have provided some relief.
The Uk has also been able to produce one of the most powerful computers on earth named Hector which could be used to process vast amounts of data including traffic management and other tasks for the British Government. As technology progresses and heads into the future, we would be amazed at how far it has gone in the span of our lifetimes. We would also be assured of constant laughter when technology plus humans equals less common sense which makes the drive worth taking. Watch out for that BRIDGE!!!!!!!
The Japanese manufacturer Toyota Motors Co. has issued a recall for all Corolla’s and Matrix’s with power windows due to problems with the mounts of their window mechanisms. There have been several reports of injuries and motorists who have had their windshields shatter due to excessive rattling. Indicators of the problem begin with changes to the sound of the windows while they are being operated. The problem if not corrected has been reported to cause shattering of the tempered glass windows which would be a big problem if you were driving fast on the freeway sending the glass into your eyes and body. The motor company will be contacting all those who purchased the said vehicles and would be repaired free of cost at all authorized dealers. Toyota has reiterated that the recall is for all vehicles of the said makes with power windows only.
Honda Motors has also issued a recall for all Honda 2003 Accords which number more than 350,000 due to a problem in the waterproofing of the cars which has water entering the location of the wiper motor. The said water seepage can cause corrosion and subsequent failure of the motor rendering it useless. Vehicles brought into dealers would inspect the problematic area and installation of a shield to protect the motor would be done. Replacement of already failing motors would also be done free of charge. The said problem has been reported to cause a circuit breaker in the vicinity to trip thus preventing it from functioning properly. Driving in foul weather without wipers is dangerous and can cause accidents so do take the warnings and take your cars if you are part of the recall to the nearest dealer for proper inspections.
Study driving is a blog for drivers and auto enthusiasts of all kinds. Here we talk about driving tips and techniques ranging from the simplest lessons for beginners, to defensive driving techniques, to advanced maneuvers. (Read more...)
Research into possible assistance by the car’s computers along with various sensors in aiding drivers when driving in bad weather is underway to make the roads safer. Funded by Veridan and Honda, the researchers at The University of Buffalo are working to perfect and prototype a system which would have some built-in reflexes into the car allowing it to assist the driver in case of a skid or slide. Many drivers still get into accidents when ice, rain and other weather impair the usual driving environment.
Driving in winter is NOT a fun thing to do, as many of you will attest to. One danger is skidding. You may be driving at a reasonable speed and being as careful as you can be, but a stray patch of ice just might throw you out of control. YOU may know how to control a skid, but do your (driving) family members know how to handle it? Here is some information that you can share with them, especially your teenagers.
