Ford is developing technology to avoid traffic jams
Advances in science and technology have never made their way faster into the lives of the average man on the street than they are at the present time, and this applies mostly to the wide spread of mobile technology, smartphones, tablets and the like, but our cars have also become more and more loaded with various type of adaptive cruise control, parking assist and lane-keeping aids, not to mention the fact that they’ll be able to start driving themselves pretty soon on a regular basis.
In this type of setting, Ford has announced that they’re developing an automated traffic jam assist system meant to automatically change the car’s speed in order to reduce gridlock, conserve resources, lower emissions and by doing all of these, also improve safety and lower driver stress.
Ford’s traffic jam assist is meant to function in environments where there are only cars and where the lanes are clearly marked, it will not function if any other objects are present, such as pedestrians, bikes or animals; regardless however, the system can of course, be overridden at any time by the driver.
Ford have planned for their current active park assist system to evolve alongside other technologies in order to allow for other actions to become automated, such as hands-free parallel parking as well as perpendicular parking.
To further accentuate the importance that Ford are putting on increasing safety for their drivers and passengers, they will be the first carmaker to introduce seatbelt airbags on a mainstream car in Europe. This safety feature option will be available on the future Ford Mondeo model which will go on sale in Europe in 2013.
The idea combines the traditional seatbelt with airbag technology in order to offer an added level of safety protection for rear-seat occupants. The data released by Ford shows that the inflatable seatbelt deploy in forty milliseconds and spread the crash forces over an area five times larger than conventional seatbelts.
