Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT) conducted a public road test, at it's winter test track in Hokkaido Prefecture, for the ASV (Advanced Safety Vehicle) -3, a project led by MLIT to reduce accidents by using a vehicle-to-vehicle communication system. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems detect nesrby cars and alerts the driver with an audible or audiovisual warning.
Since April 2001, Japanese auto makers have developed systems for this project. At the test track, 14 auto makers actually drove test vehicles equipped with the system to show the system details and operation.
Currently, Nissan, Daihatsu, and Mitsubishi motirs, are testing the system for their new cars. In Nissan's test vehicle, the system detects a car approaching from the corner of the car and prompts the driver to be careful. When a danger of collision is imminent, an alert icon will appear in the upper right corner of the monitor. Meanwhile, on Daihatsu's test vehicle, warnings are displayed on the monitor of the car navigation system similar to the Nissan system. In this test, a notebook PC carried into the backseat of the car was used for calculation and display, while presenting the information on the monitor of the car navigation system. On the other hand, Mitsubishi's test vehicle has a dedicated monitor that is installed on top of the instrument panel of the car navigation system. An arrow mark indicates an approaching car. The arrow mark will appear on this dedicated monitor only when other cars are approaching.
Although MLIT officials think that, there are no standards or specifications yet, all systems utilized the 5.8-GHz frequency band. All the test vehicles also deployed the same antenna and communication device, although each maker developed a unique way to alert drivers for dangers such as potential collisions. Well if it works and cuts down on accedents, its all good.