Cars now a days are loaded with extra features not only to make driving a less demanding chore or make it more comfortable, but one of the major reason is for safety. One of the most common reasons for embedded systems in cars is for the high amounts of extra safety systems.
With all the extra safety systems in cars, they are not far off driving themselves from point A to point B anyway. A selection of these include: lane assist, collision detection, autonomous braking to avoid collision, rear camera, adaptive headlights, the list goes on and on.
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The purpose of these safety systems is not to increase the price or sound better than the other, but simply to try and have a fatal free road from collisions in the near future. The rated safest car in 2015 was the Volvo XC90. This large car although is made out of toughed material, also has a substantial amount of embedded safety systems, air bags line the length of the cabin essentially leaving the occupants in a rubber boat. Their main aim however, is to prevent the accident in the first place. The Volvo combines object detection, collision warning and autonomous braking to try and prevent the accident in the first place. All this takes place through an undetectable camera mounted by the rear view mirror of the car which scans the area ahead [2]. This first warns the driver if an object is detected that they either may not have seen or may be too close to perform an emergency stop if necessary. The autonomous brakes will active if an object was detected to have slowed or stopped and the driver has not responded.
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The Volvo has also combined additional safety systems such as active cruise control and lane departure [4]. This again uses visual systems to detect if the flow of traffic has decreased after active cruise control was switched on. If the car detects the traffic has slowed and the driver has not responded, it will actively slow the car by releasing the electronic accelerator. This is also combined with land assist to detect if the car is drifting outside or too close to the lines. If the car gets within a specified distance to the line, a waning will present to the driver to inform them of the possible risk. If no alteration of location is made, the car will steer itself to a more comfortable center of the road.
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Since the introduction of embedded systems in car safety systems, the fatality rates for road collisions has significantly reduced world wide. An example of Canada is show below ranging from 1991 - 2010. This number is expected to have dropped massively since and with the further development of embedded systems as safety systems in cars, will continue to drop until the roads are a collision free area.
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