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No Autonomous Toyotas, All Models Will Have Collision Avoidance Systems Instead

There’s a full on race between automakers to create fully autonomous vehicles, believed to be the future way of traveling - step inside the car, enter the destination and off it goes. Boring right? Well, surprisingly, Toyota isn’t planning to put people in self driving toasters anytime soon.
2015 Toyota Camry 1 photo
Photo: Toyota
During the advanced safety seminar in Ypsilanti, MI, this week, Toyota deputy chief safety technology officer Seigo Kuzumaki said the company is is focused at achieving maximum security without cutting off the driver’s job.

"Toyota's main objective is safety, so it will not be developing a driverless car," he said. “Toyota’s vision is of a world without traffic fatalities, and these advanced connected and automated vehicle technologies hold the potential to revolutionize automotive safety,” Seigo further explained. “We are committed to bringing advanced active safety systems to market as quickly as possible and will make them accessible to a broad range of drivers.”

Toyota considers that a human being is the ultimate sensor of a car; it is gifted by nature to understand, evaluate and decide actions needed to be done. Of course, it has it’s flaws, like distraction, fatigue and a slower response time, but this doesn’t mean it should be replaced by robots.

Instead, the company is working to strengthen human weaknesses, putting the man and the machine at work in a harmonious way that targets safety and efficiency. This translates into a set of driving assistance systems that will be implemented to all models in the near future.

According to a report from Detroit Free Press, Toyota general manager Bill Fay said the technology designed to avoid crashes is available on higher end models, especially Lexus, but no Toyota offers full support for them.

“We will accelerate them to the full lineup at an affordable price,” Bill said.

According to the source, Toyota will start adapting the new technology to its vehicles starting with 2015 models, expecting to offer advanced pre-collision system on all cars by 2017.

Toyota is currently demonstrating its safety research project at the Collaborative Safety Research Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it also unveiled several advanced automated driving technologies, including the Automated Highway Driving Assist (AHDA), the SPAD LIDAR system for detecting the position and the shapes of obstacles as well as a 3D head-up display to inform drivers about key aspects without forcing them to take their eyes off the road.

More on those systems can be found in the press release attached bellow.
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press release
 

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