Nissan has unveiled the company’s fourth edition of its Advanced Safety Vehicle. Designed to test the latest safety technology, the newest example uses a technology that can talk with other cars and even cell phones. The ASV4 vehicle is the result of a joint venture between Nissan and Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
The GPS-based technology allows Nissan’s navigation system — the down fall of this technology is that it only works with Nissan products — to communicate with other cars and warn the drivers of vehicles they might not be able to see. According to Nissan, the technology was developed in an effort to reduce the kind of accidents that represent 60% of all traffic accidents in Japan — collisions at blind-intersections, rear-end collisions and right-turning vehicle hit by on-coming vehicle from the opposite direction at an intersection. The technology could also be used to communicate will cell phones in an attempt to reduce the number of pedestrians involved in auto accidents.
The goal of the ASV project — set to be achieved by 2015 — is to reduce the number of Nissan vehicles involved in fatal or serious auto accidents in Japan by 50% compared to the number of incidents in 1995.
