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.
Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Personal Rapid Transit, clear benefits for European cities
    July 26, 2012
    David Crawford watches the race to get the world's first PRT system up and running. To paraphrase the old joke about buses bunching, you seem to have to wait several decades for a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system, and then half a dozen come along together. Currently, in fact, there are well over that number of schemes for driverless electric passenger-carrying 'pod' networks at various stages of planning, design and implementation around the world. Locations range from a straight-off-the-drawing board ne
    Read More
  • Groups seek electronic collision alert devices on big trucks
    February 20, 2015
    The US Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Truck Safety Coalition, the Center for Auto Safety and Road Safe America have filed a petition with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requesting that the agency initiate rulemaking to require forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking (F-CAM) systems on all new large trucks and buses with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 10,000 pounds or more. F-CAM technology uses radar and sensors to first alert the driver and then t
    Read More
  • Big data and self-driving cars: New studies from ITF
    May 29, 2015
    Two new reports launched by the International Transport Forum (ITF) during the Annual Summit of Transport Ministers in Leipzig, Germany, highlight issues for the transport sector: the use of big data and the trend towards automated cars. The ITF claims that failing to ensure strong privacy protection in the collection and processing of location data may result in a regulatory backlash against the technology, which could hamper innovation and limit the social and economic benefits the use of such data delive
    Read More
  • Data handling important for autonomous vehicles
    December 8, 2016
    Data handling is becoming an ever-greater part of transportation and never more so than with autonomous vehicles, as Andrew Bardin Williams hears from some big names.
    Read More

Highlighted Content