Safe but expensive

There's a new crop of cars out on the roads that according to the experts make major strides in car safety. Edmunds.com has a "Top Ten" list of safety features including smart cruise control that use radar to automatically slows a car when it is about to collide with something, "blind spot" detection systems that use tiny cameras and lane-change warning systems. Of course, these feature seems to come mostly on luxury cars. In that vein, the WSJ looks at the new (and expensive) Volvo S80:

[It has] a collision-warning system that's similar in approach, working in concert with the car's optional radar-based adaptive cruise control. The typical job of adaptive cruise control is to "see" the traffic up ahead and keep you traveling safely behind it, by operating both the brake and the throttle. But by also calculating the time gap between your car and that traffic, the S80 can alert the driver to an impending crash by sounding a warning and flashing a red light onto the windshield. When this happens, the brakes are primed to deploy full stopping power, regardless of how hard the driver presses on the brake pedal.

Comments

[Noel Park]

I thought that MAV said that DOT would not be doing construction on major streets at hours. This morning they had a lane closed on east bound Anaheim Street in Wilmington at 7:00 AM, backing traffic up almost to Vermont/North Gaffey.

This caused MAJOR delays, as Anaheim is a main entry point to the northbound 110 Freway at commute time.

What a bunch of JERKS!