For instance, cars know a crash is taking place about seven milliseconds after initial impact as the pressure wave from the smash hits acceleration sensors. Many respond almost a millisecond later by tensioning seat belts, unlocking doors, rolling down windows and inflating airbags.
By contrast, a human will take up to 300 milliseconds just to realise another car has hit them let alone take any action.
These driver assistance systems are becoming standard on newer cars and there is a growing market in gadgets that add some of that intelligence to older vehicles.
At CES, MobileEye showed off a dashboard mounted camera that can warn of collisions several seconds before they happen or it can alert a driver if they straying out of their lane.
Taser showed off the Protector system that can, when paired with a mobile, stop a person calling or texting while driving. It is one of many similar gadgets that try to make driving safer.
Also at CES, inthinc showed off the Tiwi, a device that monitors a car’s speed and location and relays the information to parents keen to keep an eye on where their offspring are going and how fast. It also delivers verbal warnings if it detects a car being driven faster than the speed limit or handled recklessly.
Todd Follmer, creator of the gadget, said it can also be programmed to recognise “geo-fences” and warn when a vehicle is taken beyond these virtual borders.
Developing Tiwi was not straightforward, said Mr Follmer, because there is little standardisation among manufacturers about the format of information sent over the data bus inside a car.
“It’s mandated that diagnostic codes are published so anyone can work on your car,” said Mr Follmer. “But a lot of the stuff we get is not standard. We have to reverse engineer what’s on the bus to get at it.”
His comments cut to the crux of the debate about the smarter cars we will all be driving in the future, how much they will know about us and what happens to that data – are we still in the driving seat?
