With smartphones – and texting while walking - now a ubiquitous phenomenon, Ford has taken on the challenge of reducing vehicle-pedestrian collisions. Around the world, every eight minutes on average a pedestrian is injured after being hit by a vehicle. Many of these cases involve so-called “petextrians”.
Ford has launched a new Pre-Collision Assist system that includes pedestrian detection technology, which will be available in the all-new 2017 Ford Fusion. The new technology is designed to detect and anticipate the movements of pedestrians, including petextrians, and prevent collisions or reduce their gravity when they do occur.
“Since we are trying to avoid a collision that hasn’t happened yet, prediction of the future is an inherent part of the puzzle,” explains Scott Lindstrom, driver assist technologies manager at Ford. “Having a huge cache of data – based on real-world driving conditions – helps our system be smart enough to determine what may happen in a second that has not yet even occurred.”
Ford dug into over 240 terabytes of test data taken from road tests it carried out to design its new Pre-Collision Assist system.
