Watching out for cars

As the Thanksgiving journey to gather with family and friends approaches, I begin to cringe a bit. It seems that highways are becoming more difficult to travel. Trying to drive at the speed limit is impossible, since even in the right-most lane you create a bottleneck for those vehicles intent on breaking the land-speed record without treking to the Great Salt Flats. Enforcement seems to have diminished greatly, and when drivers do pass a speeder who’s been pulled over, it’s like they’ve gotten a green flag at the Indy 500.

For the past few years, New York City has been experimenting with the use of cameras to catch drivers who run lights, and this summer a bill was presented in Albany to allow NYC to install 40 cameras to catch speeders. Their license plate numbers would be recorded and they would be fined $50 for the first violation. According to the New York Times, there are already 115 cities in the U.S. using such automated imaging tactics.

It’s one thing to catch a speeder, but it is sort of an after-the-fact approach. It doesn’t prevent the speeder from causing property damage or physical injury. Arming vehicles with systems to prevent collisions with other cars and pedestrians seems like a more productive approach. And that’s what Mobileye (www.mobileye.com) and STMicroelectronics (www.st.com) are doing.

Last month, the companies announced that their jointly developed vision-processor system-on-chip with EyeQ technology is now deployed in over one million vehicles worldwide. Manufacturers such as BMW, GM, Volvo, and Ford are building the system into vehicles, and Mobileye and ST expect many more will follow.

The companies’ designers have already produced two generations of collision-avoidance devices, and the third — EyeQ3, now in development — will be introduced by car makers as early as 2014. The EyeQ vision processors monitor the driving scene in front of the vehicle constantly and alert the driver before an impending accident with a car, pedestrian, bicyclist, or motorcycle, or if the driver is about to veer out of his or her lane without using a turn signal.

EyeQ is also capable of detecting speed limit signs, and controlling the headlights’s high and low beams during night driving. Future-generation devices will include camera-only automatic electronic braking, as well as various features enabled by self-driving technologies. Obviously, the technology makes it possible to put an end to dangerous driving, and should be mandatory on all vehicles.

Until then, drive carefully, and have a Happy Thanksgiving.