Bill Gates Envisions Cars that Can't Crash

livescience.com...

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) _ Microsoft Corp. mogul Bill Gates and the leader of Ford Motor Co. outlined a future Friday in which software enables cars to fix themselves and avoid accidents.

Gates and Bill Ford Jr., Ford's chairman and chief executive, said high-definition screens, speech recognition technology, cameras, digital calendars and navigation equipment with directions and road conditions will set car companies apart from their competitors.

Eventually, Gates said, there could be a car that wouldn't let itself crash.

"That absolutely should be the goal,'' Gates told several hundred participants of the Microsoft Global Automotive Summit at the automaker's suburban Detroit campus. "The embrace of technology will be the key for the leaders of the industry.''

Also on Friday, Microsoft unveiled its Performance Peak Initiative _ a line of computer systems to help the auto industry better coordinate supply chains, streamline design, production and sales and fill vehicles with computer gadgets.

The company said its technology is currently in 25 vehicle devices from 13 automotive companies.

Microsoft also owns MSN Autos, a vehicle information and buying network.

w0w...

cars that wouldn't let themselves crash!!!

let's hope they don't get too smart

ENJOY!!!

ahhh.....give a me a car that can't crash....I'll prove them wrong!!!

reallly, I would be worried about a software bug in it somewhere....I mean, look how many people drive off cliffs and into rivers following their gps maps!

Ok...someone had to say it!

Wouldn't he be better starting from the ground up and making with an Operating System that doesn't crash first?

Jack

Originally posted by JAK
Ok...someone had to say it!

Wouldn't he be better starting from the ground up and making with an Operating System that doesn't crash first?

Jack

niiice...

and harsh...

An interesting idea that will never happen due to the clout of various parts of the auto industry.

Ask yourself if it's really necessary that we should have cars that run on tires that blow out from a little nail someone left on the street. I can have a nightvision sensor in my dashboard, and a backup camera, but my tire can be blasted by a thumbtack? Do you honestly think all cars couldn't have tires that didn't have this problem? Makes you wonder why they don't huh?

Could the automotive industry develop cars that would never break down, and would run efficiently, and never have accidents, etc etc. I bet they could. Will they? Well, frankly, I doubt it.

That's why we need an Open Source car! Why hasn't anyone even tried that? It may be the only way to do as Gates want, and maybe he knows this too and is planning something spectacular in the near future. Billy Boy doesn't make announcements like this for no reason you know, he likes to make money and the Auto Industry is a perfect place for the Computer Industries disruptive model to improve the Auto Market.

That's why we need an Open Source car!

You have a darn good point there.

I wonder what would happen if someone (not from the big automakers) was to really get down and inside today's cars. And perhaps analyze them and see where they're lacking and make recommendations. I'm telling you... I think today's cars are lacking in some major areas and they don't have to be.

Here's an unseen image of the the new dashboard. Shh'...it's a secret.



Sanc'.

What if they used the technology in racing cars, we'd loose all the excitement.

If the car could prevent itself from crashing what would it do if you were driving down a narrow street, if you drive straight on you crash into an oncoming vehicle but if you slam on the breaks then the lorry behind you slams into the back of you. Maybe an onboard computer could try and calculate which crash would be the worst

I would never want to have one.
Think about it,
It always "crashes"
It is always vulnerable
It is always in for maintenance.
and also by the way, it's life expectancy would only be about 18 months before it won't be supported and you will be paying an arm and a leg for it.

When one crashes, be sure that MS will blame it on the "other guy" LOL

life imitating art ?

www.speedlimit.org.uk...

Red Barchetta
This brilliant, powerful song, from Rush's 1981 album "Moving Pictures", is set in a future totalitarian society where cars have been completely banned, but their memory is still kept alive....

RED BARCHETTA

Inspired by "A Nice Morning Drive" by Richard S. Foster
Music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, lyrics by Neal Peart
© 1981 CORE Music Publishing

My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about.
He says it used to be a farm,
Before the Motor Law. ........

had always assumed that "A Nice Morning Drive" by Richard S. Foster was a science-fiction short story telling a tale similar to that in the song.

But, on further investigation, it turns out that it was a slightly more prosaic, but still fascinating, article that appeared in "Road and Track" magazine in 1973 looking at the possible future implications of heavy-handed car safety legislation and which foreshadows the current situation with SUVs in America

Originally posted by JAK
Ok...someone had to say it!

Wouldn't he be better starting from the ground up and making with an Operating System that doesn't crash first?

Follow up post number two, not bad You beat me to that.

What can I say, another wave of hype from Microsoft.

And by the way, from years of experience... Unix so rarely crashes that Microsoft could spare itself the trouble of developing a new OS. It's been done.

The new Ford/Microsoft car

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
   
   
2. Every time they painted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
   
   
3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to re-install the engine.
   
   
4. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
   
   
5. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
   
   
6. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
   
   
7. On every other occasion when your car would just die for no reason, you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you would just accept this.
   
   
8. Ford would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a Ford subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, Ford would become a target for investigation by the Justice Dept.
   
   
9. Every time Ford introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
   
   
10. You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.
    
    
11. A particular model year of car wouldn't be available until AFTER that year, instead of before.
    
    
12. You could only have one person at a time in your car, unless you bought a car '95 or a car NT, but then you'd have to buy more seats.
    
    
13. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car. Wait a sec, it's that way NOW!
    
    
14. The oil, alternator, gas, engine warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.
    
    
15. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other brands for years.
    
    
16. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft Gas (tm).
    
    
17. The airbag system would say "are you sure?" before going off.
    
    
18. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
    
    
19. The stereo system will only be able to listen to Microsoft FM and play Microsoft cassettes, using Microsoft's DRM and format.
    
    
20. To turn on the air conditioner, you will have to shut down the car for two minutes and restart it.
    
    
21. When you call the service department, they will tell you it's not their fault and blame it on the company that made the tires.
    
    
22. To make right turns, you will have to upgrade to Microsoft SteeringWheel 2.0.
    
    
23. If you can't afford to buy a new car, you can just borrow one from a friend and copy it.
    
    
    
    
    
    Edit: shamelessly stolen from eslwhere.
    
    
    
    [edit on 3-5-2005 by HowardRoark]

This coming from the man who once said, "There will be no need to ever have more than 512K of memory in a computer". I'm skeptical, if you'll believe it.

Howard...

and when you have to call the 'auto club' from the emergency lane, someone turns up in a
Symantec van.

Sanc'.

Originally posted by Djarums
An interesting idea that will never happen due to the clout of various parts of the auto industry.

[........]

Could the automotive industry develop cars that would never break down, and would run efficiently, and never have accidents, etc etc. I bet they could. Will they? Well, frankly, I doubt it.

One various part is the necessary & required Accident/Liability Insurance Industry...and i don't see how individual responsibility for
vehicle operation could or would be transferred to the automobile manufacturer(Ford?) or the computer controlled systems(Gates?)
whose intent & purpose & warrenty is to avoid accidents/damage/....

Would the manufacturer or the product be responsible If Or When there appears another fatalistic ?Kozlawzski? type (of 'Vanishing Point' fame)
who, thru fate or destiny or a morbid death-wish rams his/their speeding vehicle into the inert mass, bulldozer blade of the RoadBlock ...CRASH !

food-for-thought tho....
maybe Gates & Ford are making whisperings--> because the stage has been set with all the 'Tort Reforms' prompted by the 'fat-cat, republican agenda, neo-cons & PACs &....) which has put a CAP on corporate liability judgements at ~$250K, if i remember right.
whoa, conspiracy ???

I guess that would add new meanings to the phrases "hard drive" and "service pack".

I'll never allow control of my car be taken by anyone; much less Gates.

How could I conduct some of my Road Rage Maneuvers if I had to fight the stupid car at the same time?

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
I'll never allow control of my car be taken by anyone; much less Gates.

How could I conduct some of my Road Rage Maneuvers if I had to fight the stupid car at the same time?

"You just cut in front, you 404!"

Sanc'.

...for years I"ve been saying we could all use a nice big fat rubber bumper - at a uniform height- right around the midsection of all our autos...
Yeah, I know I could use one!