Skip to main content

Mazda develops system to avoid car-streetcar collisions

The University of Tokyo and Mazda Motor Corporation have jointly developed a system involving wireless communications technology to prevent collisions between cars and streetcars (or trams). The system’s car-mounted sensors can detect signals from a streetcar up to 100 metres away, in contrast with the current range of just a few dozen metres for conventional sensors on cars. The new system is designed to prevent collisions between vehicles and oncoming streetcars by allowing their position and direction
September 5, 2013 Read time: 1 min
The 5315 University of Tokyo and 1844 Mazda Motor Corporation have jointly developed a system involving wireless communications technology to prevent collisions between cars and streetcars (or trams).

The system’s car-mounted sensors can detect signals from a streetcar up to 100 metres away, in contrast with the current range of just a few dozen metres for conventional sensors on cars. The new system is designed to prevent collisions between vehicles and oncoming streetcars by allowing their position and direction to be automatically monitored, according to the university.

The experimental ASV-5 version of Mazda’s Atenza sedan will be deployed for trials in Hiroshima. Streetcars, which are used by around 150,000 people per day in Hiroshima, form an essential part of the city’s public transportation system.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • C-ITS in the EU: ‘It has got a little tribal recently’
    April 16, 2019
    As the C-ITS Delegated Act begins its journey through the European policy maze, Adam Hill looks at who is expecting what from this proposed framework for connected vehicles – and why some people are insisting that the lawmakers are already getting things wrong
  • Inland waterways can de-stress city roads
    March 17, 2016
    David Crawford looks at an under-utilised solution for city-centre deliveries. The use of rivers and canals for moving freight is a well-established mode in North Western Europe, where it can take advantage of an intensively developed network. In the Netherlands, 40% of the total volume of goods transported internally goes by water; the figure for Flanders (the neighbouring Dutch-speaking region of Belgium) is 11.5%.
  • Cooperative road infrastructures - progress and the future
    February 1, 2012
    Robert Bertini, deputy administrator of the USDOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration, discusses the research and deployment paths of cooperative road infrastructures. High-level analysis by the US's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the potential of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure/Infrastructure-to-Vehicle (V2I/I2V) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technologies indicates that V2V could in exclusivity address a large proportion of crashes involving unimpaired drivers. In fact,
  • A new direction for the future of mobility?
    August 14, 2013
    Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has unveiled his vision of a futuristic Hyperloop transport system this week, proposing to build a solar-powered network of crash-proof capsules that would whisk people from San Francisco to Los Angeles in half an hour. Musk says the Hyperloop is expected to be a closed-tube transport system not unlike the pneumatic delivery systems found in some old buildings, which use a pulse of air to move a capsule and cargo to a designated location. Based on what he has revealed to date,