 I look forward to having technology capable of making transportation safer. – by Zeke
|It would be a heck of a following distance (10:04pm EST Sun Dec 21 2003)
“it would also enable proximity alerts between automobiles”
When I use my GPS it is off by significant fractions of a mile. For instance, after my drive I'll download my trace (path followed) and overlay it on the map, and it shows that I drove off the paved surface up to a quarter of a mile in places (especially when the car goes behind the north side of a hill — I'm in the northern hemisphere). Even when it tells me the GPS is accurate to 22 feet (and some days it only gets as good as 70-100 feet), my position is consistently off by a 100 feet from waypoints that I set at intersection.
I just don't see how you could do relevant proximity alerts with that level of error. Moreover, it has to calculate not just proximity, but also the direction vectors. You shouldn't get a proximity alert because you are going 50 mph down a parkway and whipping past parked cars only 3 feet away.
Forgive me if I don't trade in my seeing-eye dog, Rex, for this system just yet. Rex hasn't gotten me in a traffic accident yet. – by Woody