Nihon Car & Bike provided a very interesting piece of news on Honda’s third version of the ASV (“Advanced Safety Vehicles”), and you can find more detailed information and pictures on Nihon Car & Bike. To explain it briefly, there is a set of sensors, cameras and wireless devices (3G and Wireless LAN) installed in the car that are designed to alert other cars in case of an accident or emergency situation. Let’s use this scenario to clarify the system:

you’re driving behind a car that also has ASV, a pedestrian crossed the street, the car in front of you brakes for the pedestrian and because you haven’t seen the pedestrian, you start overtaking the car in front of you (with the danger of hitting pedestrian that you haven’t seen). The car in front of you relays the information to aqll the cars in its vicinity, you are alerted that there is a danger ahead and you don’t overtake the car.
An hour later or so, while you’re still driving, you start to feel sick (“damn that last donut!”) and the car is capable of sensing that there is a problem (by the way you’re driving, your body temperature, …) and immediately alerts the emergency services who call you back in video-conference mode to see what’s going on… only problem is that you’re out of range (no 3G coverage). What the system does at that moment is relay the information from car to car until it reaches a vehicle within 3G coverage and information can be passed on to you.

I tried to explain Honda’s ASV in a simple way, but you’ll agree that it’s very impressive. Some questions remain on the security of the system (virus attacks for example) and all the information that is passed on from car to car.