Mazda Advanced Safety Vehicle 4 to begin public road trials

Mazda has announced it will put new vehicle-to-vehicle safety technology to the test in the Hiroshima area from March 11 as part of the fourth phase of its Advanced Safety Vehicle project.

Mazda will collect and analyze data on the system which is designed to alert drivers of oncoming vehicles at blind intersections or on twisting roads with limited visibility. The trials will be conducted in collaboration with other ASV project members Mitsubishi Motors Japan and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.

The aim of enabling vehicle-to-vehicle communications is to reduce driver error and mitigate two vehicle collisions at blind intersections, rear-end collisions and accidents when a vehicle performs right turns. Mazda plans to begin testing the two vehicle blind collision avoidance system in fiscal year 2007. Road trials of the right-turn and rear-end collision avoidance systems are set to commence in fiscal 2008.

The ASV project began in 1991 with test results from Phase One to Phase Three having already resulted in the successful development of various advanced safety technologies. These include: a rear vehicle monitoring system that detects vehicles approaching from behind at highway speeds; and Mazda’s Precrash Safety System, which uses milliwave radar to monitor for oncoming obstacles, then alerts the driver and automatically applies the brakes if necessary.

The project’s fourth phase (2006 to 2010) aims to promote the spread of ASV technologies and develop and implement the new telecommunications-based safe driving support system.

The ASV system is part of a broader Intelligent Transport System (ITS) initiative being undertaken in the Hiroshima area that aims to use advanced telecommunications technology to create an information network between people, vehicles and sensors installed along roadways to address transportation problems such as road accidents, traffic jams and damage to the environment.