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Varia + FCC + NTSHA.....vehicle dash indicator
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I've mentioned this to a couple folks. We love our Garmin Varias. How about a collaboration between FCC/NTSHA along the lines of the required backup sensor updates to cars?

Give the Varia-like radars a common band. Assign that band to a sensor on cars just like your radar detector would work.

No more "I didn't see them".

Thoughts?
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Re: Varia + FCC + NTSHA.....vehicle dash indicator [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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You're assuming that automobile manufacturers actually care about the safety of those outside of the vehicle. Simply looking at the ever growing size of cars/trucks/suv's will tell you that's not the case at all.

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SUVs and trucks have also grown considerably in the past two decades, with trucks being the worst offenders. Take the Ford F-150, America’s best-selling vehicle of all time: when I measured models from the 1980s and 1990s, most trim lines were about three feet four inches at the hood’s leading edge. Modern versions came in at around three feet ten inches. Then there’s the midsize Toyota Tacoma, a durably popular favorite for its combination of just-right size and off-road capability: its second-generation version, made from 2004 to 2015, featured a front end that’s around three feet five inches tall. The current generation’s hood is a whopping four feet one inch from the ground—a full eight inches higher than the version it replaced.

https://www.outsideonline.com/...adly-cyclist-crashes

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https://www.slowtwitch.com/...n_Swimming_6700.html
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Re: Varia + FCC + NTSHA.....vehicle dash indicator [tallswimmer] [ In reply to ]
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This is so true. I had a Pathfinder when I was in highschool and loved it. Now that my car is starting to break down I looked into getting a new one and holy shit are they big now.
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Re: Varia + FCC + NTSHA.....vehicle dash indicator [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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Ford actually did some work around this a bit - not directly Varia radar, but some of the thinking on how to identify cyclists. They showed it off at CES a few years ago in partnership with Trek & Bontrager. I don't remember if I ever ended up writing about it.

I think ultimately though the better (and more realistic) path at this point is getting autonomous cars to the point of recognizing cyclists and not hitting them. We're seeing the tech move so fast. After all the inverse is true - drones like the Skydio R2 can do the same and recognize people/cyclists/etc and track them, and not hit objects as thin as a twig. Currently the limitation of the tech there is mostly speed, about 35MPH in the implementation in the R2, but I presume that's more due to power consumption limitations and size onboard (versus a car having massively more capacity for size and power).


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My tiny little slice of the internets: dcrainmaker.com
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Re: Varia + FCC + NTSHA.....vehicle dash indicator [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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burnthesheep wrote:


Thoughts?


There's a ton of work going on in this area. Hundreds of millions of dollars for this specific problem. I can't go into detail due to NDAs.

The work covers a few different methods. Once is passive detection of cyclists/pedestrians using stereo vision, lidar, or radar already on cars. (no special electronics on the bike, though possibly non-electronic stuff). Another is active emission from bikes/pedestrians to assist the stereo/lidar/radar - I assume this active emission is what you meant referring to the Varia? And the third is just vehicle-to-vehicle communication (considering bikes a "vehicle"). E.g. if your GPS head unit knows its location/velocity/heading, it can tell all approaching cars approximately where it is (within GPS/sensor accuracy).

A lot of it is nearly read to roll out. The reason it's taking so long is though while it's "easy" to get all the stuff working 99% of the time, it has to be better than that when people's lives are on the line. Mis-communication or bad reading giving the wrong location of the bike can be worse than no information at all.

Some of it requires foundational technologies to roll-out. For example vehicle-to-vehicle comms using a 5G-like network are going to have to be standardized, and that's still a work in progress. Things like WiFi or Bluetooth won't cut it.
Last edited by: trail: Aug 24, 20 11:42
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Re: Varia + FCC + NTSHA.....vehicle dash indicator [trail] [ In reply to ]
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trail wrote:
burnthesheep wrote:


Thoughts?


There's a ton of work going on in this area. Hundreds of millions of dollars for this specific problem. I can't go into detail due to NDAs.

The work covers a few different methods. Once is passive detection of cyclists/pedestrians using stereo vision, lidar, or radar already on cars. (no special electronics on the bike, though possibly non-electronic stuff). Another is active emission from bikes/pedestrians to assist the stereo/lidar/radar - I assume this active emission is what you meant referring to the Varia? And the third is just vehicle-to-vehicle communication (considering bikes a "vehicle"). E.g. if your GPS head unit knows its location/velocity/heading, it can tell all approaching cars approximately where it is (within GPS/sensor accuracy).

A lot of it is nearly read to roll out. The reason it's taking so long is though while it's "easy" to get all the stuff working 99% of the time, it has to be better than that when people's lives are on the line. Mis-communication or bad reading giving the wrong location of the bike can be worse than no information at all.

Some of it requires foundational technologies to roll-out. For example vehicle-to-vehicle comms using a 5G-like network are going to have to be standardized, and that's still a work in progress. Things like WiFi or Bluetooth won't cut it.

Like button activated.
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