Infiniti to use lane departure warning on vehicles this year
Since the auto industry has pretty much reached the point with new vehicles where it can't do very much more to save lives in crashes, it's now turning with increased vigor to technologies that will stop crashes from happening.
On that front, one of the most popular ideas involves a technology that stops a vehicle from inadvertently leaving a lane and drifting into another, when the driver is tired or distracted or whatever. So a whole bunch of serious car companies and parts suppliers are developing it.
But it looks like Nissan North America is going to be the first company to bring the technology to a production vehicle in North America when it launches its Lane Departure Warning (LDW) on a pair of its upscale Infiniti models.
The Infiniti LDW system uses a small camera, speed sensor, an indicator and an audible warning buzzer and will be offered on 2005 models of the FX crossover sport utility vehicle this fall, and on the new M45 sports-sedan in the spring of 2005 as a 2006 model.
It is designed to work only when the vehicle is going faster than 72 kmh, and it cannot work when it cannot see the line markings, which would include snow-covered roads.
The value of the LDW system is obvious when you look at the U.S. crash statistics, maintains Robert Yakushi, the director of product safety for Nissan North America, Inc., which includes Canada.
A 2001 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that 55 percent of fatal accidents in the U.S. are caused by lane departure. The study found that more than 1.5 million crashes a year are caused by distracted or drowsy drivers
The LDW system should reduce this number of crashes, Nissan hoped, because generates visual and auditory warnings to help alert the driver that the vehicle is about to move out of its lane.
This warning does not sound, Yakushi quickly adds, if the driver uses the vehicle's turn signals, since that informs the system's control unit of intended lane changes. ''The system also features a manual cancel switch, which allows the driver to turn the system off when desired, though the system automatically resets when the vehicle is restarted.''