Those of you listening carefully will have undoubtedly heard the branch that Wilson is crawling out give off a distinctive crack. He is of course suggesting that the car would know enough to slow itself down when it thinks it's necessary.
"In the event of driver error," he says, "the vehicle will be automatically held in the proper lane. Braking action will be adapted to the individual situation and, above all, initiated in time."
While most drivers will welcome a system that warns them about upcoming potholes, it's not altogether clear that they will embrace a system that does the braking and steering for them, no matter how precise and safe its actions are. That's a social consideration, however, so Wilson will continue to work on the technology PASS and let the political chips fall where they may.
The key to this future is most assuredly DGPS, since it will be able to "localize a vehicle within less than 20 centimeters, even under the most diverse conditions. Such accurate localization will be made possible by precise data on road conditions," and this is also being researched by DaimlerChrysler engineers as part of the PASS project.