Assistance Needed: Car Makers Sending in the Active Safety Cavalry

In this article, the author focuses on advances in driver assistance systems and describes how they are becoming more prevalent in automobiles. The author first relates that driver assistance systems can be placed into three categories: collision warning systems, collision mitigation systems, and collision avoidance systems. Adaptive cruise control (ACC), lane-change assistance, and parking-assistance systems are the most common suite of currently available driver assistance technologies. Systems such as lane departure warning (LDW) systems require some sort of a way to alert drivers. The authors relates that audible warnings and vibrating steering wheels are among two of the ways that drivers can be warned. Parking assistance systems, with advanced electronically controlled power steering, are also described. The article concludes with a caveat that even though there has been significant advances in driver assistance systems, problems in software control, integration, and appropriate intervention still need to be resolved.