Ford’s New Technology – Good or Bad?
Tim Esterdahl | Jul 24, 2012 | Comments 6
Are you done driving your car? Really, really done? Ready for a future without having to worry about driving, instead leaving that task to a robot. Ford plans for that day soon.
Ford is developing new traffic jam assist technology aimed at reducing driver stress while having the side benefit of improving transportation.
Recently, Ford released an “Autonomous Driving Technology Video” that is expanding on Ford’s parallel parking technology. The current technology is aimed at allowing your car to drive themselves in particularly stressful situations like traffic jams. The technology uses a “string of radar and camera devices to keep a vehicle in its proper lane, maintaining pace with the traffic around it, according to a report on CarConnection.com. Ford is calling it (not surprisingly) Traffic Jam Assist.
While it is pretty obvious that there are many benefits to this technology including:
- Reduced stress – sit back and let the car manage the often aggravating speed changes that traffic jams involve.
- Improved traffic flow – many driving experts point out that if all drivers drove at a lower, consistent speed it would actually increase traffic flow for all cars. Ford engineers suggest traffic could cut travel times 37.5 percent.
- Fewer accidents – quite often aggravated drivers take more risks during traffic jams causing more accidents. By using the traffic jam assist technology, cars are less likely to be involved in accidents.
Even with these benefits, there is some lingering resentment to giving up driving completely. Ford’s new technology driving focus of parallel parking assist and traffic jam assist makes it seem like the days of driving your own car are going away. While the reality of computers driving completely seems to still be many years away, this new Ford technology is the stepping stone to those days.
If you follow the trends it would seem that the future of cars is a computer-driven electric vehicle that you program with coordinates and plug-in when you get there. Are you excited for that future?
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Filed Under: Auto News
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to keep humans in control of cars. Of course I also prefer analog gauges on my dash as well (the new ford digital dash with digital “analog” tachometer annoys me). While computers are becoming more and more reliable and will likely surpass the ability of many humans to safely navigate the road, those nimrods who use drive assist all of the time are going to annoy the crap out of those of us who prefer to drive our own cars.
LOL – well said sir, well said.
I would be seriously concerned about the system’s ability to deal with winter road conditions. There will inevitably be some idiots out there who drive with “autopilot” on when the roads are covered with snow and ice.
Cha-ching: lawyers would have a field day with this.
And with this in mind, the liability costs would make this so expensive, it would not be affordable by the people who currently by Fords. Simply put: it’s not an affordable idea.
LJC – A very interesting point – the liability of these systems is a big unknown. Perhaps the legislature will finally get around to some tort reform…oh wait, that’s never gonna happen. LOL.
Heck NO, not ready for it at all and for this reason will not be buying a Ford.
I hate electronics in vehicles except for pwr. steering and brakes and pwr. windows and cruise control. I can live without AC in vehicles even and for sure don’t like electric power steering like my former 2009 corolla had. A radio would be nice, but don’t need a 6 disc CD changer. The more crap we put on vehicles the more expensive they become and almost all vehicles are too pricey for the average consumer to afford. Ford is taking this to extreme and I hope they get burnt on it and go down with the ship.