DRIVERPROOFING:

Multitasking while driving: Can technology make a car uncrashable?: With new safety features and a navigation using Google technology, Audi's new A6 is steering toward a future where drivers can (safely) be distracted.(Doron Levin, 7/26/11, Fortune)

[A]udi has also developed enhanced high-tech safety features that make the A6 more difficult to crash, as well as safer in the event of an accident. Radar and cameras can detect from the front, side and rear of the A6 whether the car is in danger of a collision, and flash a warning on the dash. "A tap on the shoulder," an Audi spokesman calls it.

Milliseconds before a collision the seat belts tense and windows close, as does the sunroof. If a collision is imminent from the rear, the car's software calculates whether to deploy the brakes in order to mitigate a second collision, if sensors show another car is ahead. The airbags still don't deploy unless there's an actual crash.

"These two trends - advanced driver information and active safety - are developing in tandem," said Mark Dahncke, an Audi spokesman. "When you carry your iPhone in the car you have this functionality already. We integrate the features into the car to make them as safe and useful as possible."

Advanced information technology is creating more and more automotive applications, turning cars into rolling computers. Eventually drivers may need to assume less responsibility for actual operation of their vehicles. Last year Google demonstrated a driver-less car that navigated 1,000 miles of California roads, more or less free of incidents. And earlier this month, legislators in Nevada passed a bill authorizing the state's Transportation Department to draw up rules and standards for driver-less cars on state roads.

Volvo has introduced a system called "City Safety" that reduces the chance of low-speed crashes in which the driver fails to brake in time, usually causing a rear-end collision. A laser sensor mounted on the rear-view mirror constantly measures that relative speed with the vehicle ahead, ordering the brakes to apply pressure in the event that driver fails to do so.

Might cars one day be uncrashable? "It will happen at some point," said Dahncke.

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