Infra-red beams, stereo cameras and millimeter wave radio to avoid collisions, glare-preventing adaptive headlights, a pop-up bonnet to soften impacts with pedestrians and technology to monitor drivers’ cardiovascular functions are amongst the ‘new-age’ safety technologies under development by Toyota.
The Japanese giant points to research showing pedestrians and the elderly accounting for a high proportion of road deaths and despite advances in lighting, nearly half of all road deaths occur at night.
So, for example, Toyota is developing technologies which automatically alter the headlight beams to keep them as near as possible to high-beam while partially shielding the lights to prevent glare for on-coming drivers.
Another new technology monitors the drivers’ grip pressure on the steering wheel and responds should the driver be disabled by a medical emergency such as a heart attack.
Toyota’s collision avoidance system uses the infra-red beams, millimeter wave radar and stereo cameras to detect pedestrians and vehicles in front even when visibility is poor.
And the pop-up bonnet, similar to technologies developed in Europe, raises the rear of the bonnet in an impact with a pedestrian to provide more space between the bonnet and engine components to soften the impact.
In fact pedestrian protection is a major focus for all automotive engineers – staggeringly, in Japan, pedestrians now account for a higher number of injuries/fatalities than drivers and passengers in cars (protected by seat belts, airbags and strong body structures).
