Lane Drifting Avoidance

Ford Fusion and Others To Add Significant Safety Addition 

A safety concept normally found only in luxury cars is soon making it's way to mainstream sedans with some help from Ford engineers.

Ford announced that the new Fusion, which is set to debut in a few weeks, will offer a lane departure alert system as part of it's new safety features.  If you've  never heard of this concept, read on as it is definitely a game changer in the way of safety.  

Basically, lane departure systems will warn drivers, especially drowsy ones, if their vehicles wander out of their lane. A digital camera mounted on the windshield ahead of the rear-view mirror keeps a watch.

If you do drift out of your lane, the system not only causes the steering wheel to vibrate if it senses an unintentional lane departure, it will also steer the car back into the right lane.

"Fusion's Lane Keeping System combines a digital imaging sensor with our own state-of-the-art control software to process images and determine what level of warning or assistance to provide to the driver," said Michael Kane, Ford development engineer. "We've put a lot of effort into ensuring the accuracy of the lane detection and the smoothness of the assist."

Ford hopes they will counter traffic accidents associated with drowsy drivers. Check out these alarming statistics reported by USA Today:

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 100,000 police-reported crashes occur every year as a result of drowsy drivers, leading to 1,500 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in monetary losses.