Advancements in new car technology have made vehicles that are able to tell when they're past their scheduled maintenance and even automatically avoid accidents. But can technology actually make people better drivers?
Engineers at Honda believe that it can. In conjunction with the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo, Honda is developing a new system that will provide feedback to drivers in a variety of different areas. The key focus is on the distance between the driver's vehicle and other cars on the road. Using the average distance between cars, the system can detect when the driver needs to speed up or slow down in order to improve their driving efficiency. The technology can also indicate how a driver can best maximize their fuel efficiency.
In testing the systems, Honda found that drivers increased their average speed by 23 percent and improved fuel economy by 8 percent.
One day, Honda speculates that the technology could potentially be used along with vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems to potentially regulate entire groups of vehicles. The automaker says this could mean the end of traffic jams in which one driver slows down and everyone else has to follow suit.