Self-Parking Cars Coming To U.S. 610
Rio writes "Vehicles that are able to parallel park themselves while drivers sit and relax behind the wheel are coming to the United States, according to a Local 6 News report. New Toyota hybrid cars are now available in Britain with a $700 "parking assist" option. Local 6 news showed video of a driver sitting and allowing the car's steering wheel to turn on its own as it pulled into a tight parking spot on a London street. The reporter never touched the wheel as the car parked itself.Toyota says expect to see the technology pop up in the U.S. soon." Here is our previous coverage of their release in Japan.
Just wait for the lawsuits to start... (Score:2, Insightful)
dom
Smarter cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, I suspect its been a long time since driver's ed taught any of that, since so few people seem to be completely ignorant on those issues. And dont even get me started on the idiots that turn right into the left lane without signalling, and then cruse along at 25MPH on the left lane while gabbing on their cellphone, completely oblivious to the line of traffic that has formed behind them thats actually trying to get where they are going.
Does it work the other way around? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Tight Spot??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who's liable for screwups? (Score:3, Insightful)
Practice...Practice...Practice (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone so un-coordinated as me can do it, anyone can do it. So in the end after a week of practice and 5 years later I ended up with $200/quarter*3 quarters/year*5 years=$3000 profit.
Re:Who's liable for screwups? (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
Re:Liability issues (Score:3, Insightful)
150 miles? (Score:2, Insightful)
Grandparent poster allow me to introduce you to the parent poster.
He's the idiot that thinks you should undertake him because 56 is a plenty fine cruising speed for the passing lane.
Please bitch slap him for all of us.
Re:Lose control? (Score:3, Insightful)
New vehicle technology always sounds scary, but eventually you'll wonder how you ever survived without it. ABS, anyone?
Re:Thank you Jesus (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the tricky part there. How do you know how close to the curb you are? If you have a good sense of spatial reasoning, you may have a "feel" for it, but a lot of people don't have that skill. The view shown in your mirrors is misleading. If the curb isn't too tall, you can do it "by feel"... you know you're at the curb when the back right tire pushes up against it. On the other hand, if you are parking next to a wall, that's a good way to scrape up your rear fender.
It's not terribly hard with practice, but it does take some skill and if you're not good at it you risk damaging your car, someone else's car, or pissing people off as they wait to pass while you mess it up and have to try again. That's more stress than many people want to have, so I can see why they might like this device.
Re:I guess for some people (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure you can. But is the owner of the car ahead of you (or behind you) just as skilled as you are?
Myself, I don't remember when I used parallel parking last time. Must be sometime around 1998, most likely. There isn't much need for this skill here.
Re:Great.. (Score:1, Insightful)
The rest of the world has them - you don't get them until you change your moronic legal system to something which fits with the rest of us.
probably illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just wait for the lawsuits to start... (Score:1, Insightful)
At some point in the next 100 years, car manufacturers will probably be sued to oblivian for ALLOWING A HUMAN driver...
Re:Thank you Jesus (Score:2, Insightful)
B) have you ever tried to park a medium sized vehicle in a major city? It's a pain even trying to find a space let alone a space you can fit into. Not to mention all those streets with no left turns (especially when it's a one way street going left, so no right turns either). And then there's all the asshole drivers who scream at you because you're stopped in the middle of traffic and you can't back up anymore because they're right behind you...
Re:Autovalet (Score:3, Insightful)
Out here, we call that a taxi. There are even bigger vehicles available, which run on fixed routes and are called buses. And then we also have trains. Perhaps you need to explore alternatives?
Re:Thank you Jesus (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet millions of Europeans (and in other places I suppose) do it daily. Amazing huh ?
Must be something in the US food.
When I parallel parked a rental car in a parking space (or possibly two, it felt like you could have parked a bus there) in one go near the Grand Canyon while driving around in the SW US, I remember I attracted a little crowd. Same thing when I managed to get out of the spot, squeeze between two poorly parked cars in the middle of the lane with about 10 cm on each side without touching anything.
It felt like people there only ever drove in their own driveway.
Re:Thank you Jesus (Score:1, Insightful)
These computer aids are all well and good, but the less actual ability to drive you need, the less ability drivers will have on average and the more road deaths we will see caused by people who simply shouldn't be driving.
Re:Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes... just like a calculator is another 'convinience' for people who are clearly far too STUPID to do math.
Re:Who's liable for screwups? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look up. Way, way up there the point passed over your head. The point was that automated systems don't absolve you of the responsibility of driving. If you have cruise control engaged and that would lead to a collision, it's your responsibility to hit the brakes. If you have auto park engaged and that would lead to a collision, it's your responsibility to hit the brakes.
Re:Wow ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Apparently in Canada they've designed the roads for sufficient excess capacity to make this work. In large metropolitan areas of the US, traffic would come to a near-absolute standstill if we "reserved" one full lane just for passing. There's simply not enough capacity on the roads. Even when you've got 4 or 6 lanes on an expressway, if you were to leave one effectively closed (except for passing) you'd have commutes of 2 hours. When a broken-down car on the shoulder even squeezes one lane, it causes miles of backups.
The problem is that a too many idiots think these passing-lane rules should apply even if traffic is moving significantly under the speed limit due to congestion. I'm just plain not going to pull over to let them get by because they feel I'm leaving a few feet too much gap in front of me in heavy traffic. They can suffer like the rest of us.
Frankly I'd be more than happy never to drive in the left lane, assuming the remaining lanes could reasonably handle the traffic throughput. Indeed I do this on roads with sufficient capacity. But on most of the roads around here, where the capacity is simply insufficient to allow this, I'm going continue to use the left lane, and I'm going to go at least the speed limit, but no, I'm not pulling over when I'm above the speed limit already just so some Type-A personality can risk my life to break the law and get home 3 minutes faster.
High speed itself is fine; high relative speed (with respect to the rest of traffic) is deadly dangerous.
Parked at 60 degree angle - Mod Parent Up (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only that, but if you live in Chicago (or anywhere with tight parking), you'll find that you don't have room to do it all in the one-pass method and you have to do that drive-forwards-and-backwards-several-times-while-
Re:Smarter cars (Score:3, Insightful)
a) You can't eat/talk on a phone/shave/apply makeup etc nearly as easily when one hand is needed to shift. Obviously this isn't as true on the highway, but definitely for in-town driving.
b) You can't zone out and totally ignore the road, unless you like the roar of an engine banging against the rev limiter nonstop...
c) When you drive a manual transmission, you tend not to pull right up to the ass end of the car in front of you, because you realize that they just might need an inch or two to roll back as they leave from a full stop.
d) Have you ever tried driving in stop-and-go traffic with a stick shift? I am convinced that traffic conditions would be immensely better if everyone had to drive with a clutch, because it makes you insane constantly working the clutch, gas, and brake back and forth to move forward 6 inches at a time, so you're going to either make sure it's worth it, or not cause the situation in the first place. Conversely, with an automatic, it's just releasing the brake a little and then applying it again.
e) Paying attention to your car, your speed, and the road around you in general is easier and more likely if every few moments you need to shift gears.
I started driving an automatic transmission and moved to a manual later, and the first thing I noticed was how much more involved I became with my driving. Similarly, when I drive other people's cars or rental cars for extended periods of time, I notice small differences in my own driving. So maybe it's just me, but it certainly seems like the smarter the car is, the less the driver has to work, and the less the driver pays attention.
For some reason I'm reminded of the story of the RV that crashed on the highway, and the investigation turned up that the driver had turned on Cruise Control and went in back to make himself a sandwich...