NewScientistTech report on 'Clever cars shine at intelligent transport conference' tells how smart vehicles under development are sensoring their own safety and parking:
'Smart vehicles capable of following the flow of traffic, parking themselves and even warning drowsy or distracted drivers to pay attention to the road are among the highlights of the Transport Systems World Congress, which takes place this London, UK, this week.
One of the recurring themes of the show is vehicle intelligence, and the inventions on display range from unfinished prototypes to models already on the market in Japan.
A prototype system developed by German company Ibeo enables a car to automatically follow the vehicle ahead. At the press of a button an infrared laser scanner in the car's bumper measures the distance to the next vehicle and a computer maintains a safe distance, stopping and starting if it becomes stuck in traffic.'
In a related matter of interest - just how many cars are in the world? Well...
Physics Factbook began collecting stats on car ownership in 1900, when somewhere between 4,142 and 8000 passenger cars existed in the United States (the only country to manufacture cars at that time). In 1985, there were 375 million passenger cars and 109 million commercial vehicles worldwide. Just 85 short years resulted in 6 million percent growth!
A 1997 report claimed that in that year, over 600 million motor vehicles existed in the world. It went on to predict that if the existing trends continued, that number would double in the next 30 years. So in 2030, we could see 1.2 billion cars - thought parking was bad now?
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