On the road to a safer holiday season with Nissan's Lane Departure Warning system

2014/07/09

On the road to a safer holiday season with Nissan's Lane Departure Warning system

• The new Note's Lane Departure Warning system improves driving safety
• Nissan engineers have driven over 100,000km in Europe to test the new system
• Nissan brings premium technology and sharp design to the B-segment

ROLLE, Switzerland (July 9th, 2014): A predicted 1.14 billion domestic holidays will be enjoyed right across Europe this year, and as the summer holidays kick off, this means long motorway journeys for many families across Europe. Nissan drivers can be sure that its test engineers have already driven those miles to develop technology which makes those journeys safer. The perfect example is the Lane Departure Warning System fitted to the Note.

Staying focused on the road during long journeys is a challenge for parents travelling with kids; research shows that having children in the car is the greatest distraction to drivers, and is 12 times more distracting than using a mobile phone[1]. Sadly, distracted drivers are a major cause of accidents: Driver inattention causes 78% of accidents, near-accidents and unintentional lane deviations[2]. Lane Departure Warning systems could prevent nearly 1 in 10 accidents that occur when changing lanes on motorways[3].

With this in mind, Nissan's engineers in Europe have driven over 100,000km and thousands of hours to test the Nissan Note's Lane Departure Warning system, part of Nissan's Safety Shield. An intelligent innovation in driving safety, the system is designed to monitor its environment, increasing the accuracy with which it alerts the driver.  

The real-world testing in Europe conducted by Nissan revealed that commonplace Lane Departure Warning systems can experience interference on narrow country lanes, and the warning can be triggered prematurely if European country differences in lane markings are not taken into account. The new Note's Lane Departure Warning system uses footage from its in-built Around View Monitor camera and data from its safety systems to continually adapt to the road conditions and type. This allows Nissan Note's Lane Departure Warning system to understand if the car is being driven on a country road or a motorway and change warning alerts given to the driver to best suit the conditions.

If the driver becomes drowsy or distracted, notifications are sounded as soon as the driver begins to veer outside of their lane. However, thanks to an advanced algorithm which monitors steering input, the warning will be suppressed if the driver is making a deliberate manoeuvre.

Richard Picton, Nissan's Safety Shield engineer said: "At Nissan, we want to make sure families can enjoy their summer holidays safely. To help with this, we spent thousands of hours testing and developing the innovative new Nissan Safety Shield across 23 European markets. Safety Shield has been designed to act as a ‘co-pilot', making motoring that bit safer."

The all-new Nissan Note is packed with innovative technology to make driving safer. Lane Departure Warning, Blind Spot Warning and Moving Object Detection combine to form the Nissan Safety Shield, complimenting the 360-degree helicopter view offered by the Around View Monitor parking aid to break new ground in the B-segment.

Bringing premium technology and sharp design to the B-segment is at the core of the new Note's appeal, with innovative thinking applied to all aspects of its design and engineering.

Note to editors:

The Nissan Safety Shield pack comprises the following three technologies:

Blind Spot Warning 

A feature once reserved for cars in the premium sector, Nissan's system uses the rear wide view camera to detect vehicles in the hidden blind spot areas on both sides of the Note. If a vehicle is detected in either blind spot, a discreet warning light illuminates in the glass of the Note's wing mirror. If the driver indicates to change lanes and the system detects a vehicle in the danger area, the light flashes and an audible warning is given.

Lane Departure Warning 

Another premium feature making its debut in the B-segment, Lane Departure Warning detects if the car is starting to drift out of lane. While you might expect a windscreen mounted camera or radar system to be required for this function, the Note again uses only its rear wide view camera. Advanced computer programming detects even faint road markings allowing the car to determine if it is drifting out of position without indicating.  If it does, a warning is given to the driver to correct their road position. Cleverly, the system automatically adjusts its sensitivity when on rural roads to allow for the different required driving style.

Moving Object Detection 

Building on the capabilities of Around View Monitor, this new function effectively gives the driver a digital co-pilot to help them look at what might be approaching the path of their reversing Note. While conventional parking aids warn the driver of an object in their way, Moving Object Detection gives an audible and visual alert if someone or something is moving around  the car, for example if a child is walking towards your reversing Note. Mounted on the tailgate and having a convex lens, the rear wide view camera has a sweep of vision in excess of 180 degrees, giving it an unparalleled field of vision at the back of the car. Images from the camera are displayed on the 5.8-inch Nissan Connect screen.

[1] AAA Australia (2013)

[2] Neale, et al. (2013) Driving Distraction and Inattention

[3] Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), Crash Avoidance Potential of Five Vehicle Technologies -US (2008)