I noticed recently as my car unexectedly broke free on an icy road how surely the vehicle's wheels could have "known" that the road surface was slipping.Simply telling the driver the outside temperature is not enough, as this is often not the road temperature, and as well, not the coefficient of friction. Antilock braking is not the issue either, as its too late if youre planning on stopping on ice once the brakes engage.If the proper censors were in place, i could write a short computer algorithm that would tell the driver exactly how many feet/meters the car would take to stop dead. This indication would be very very useful in winter driving conditions and help drivers keep the speed safe to road conditions they can't see with their eyes.The same slippage, load measurement devices used to set antilock braking could feed data to the computer about microslippage of tyres, and combined with temperature and humiditiy indicators produce a very accurate feel for the vehicle's surface traction.
In the greater picture of things, such a system would integrate with electronic variable speed limits, that the speed was set less by static numbers and more by stopping distance and vehicle control data that better measure the real concern. Also in after-dark driving, such indicators would be invaluable at protecting drivers who simply cannot know the surface conditions of the road until its too late.
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Antilock brakes work by gauging how the tires react to the pressure to stop and by taking advantage of the fact that the a car must use more energy to start the tires skidding than to continue skidding by constantly starting the tires skidding and then rolling hundreds of times a second.
The brake systems doesn't "know" what the road conditions are. This is unfortunately a NEW technology requirement that has not been developed yet. Although an admirable desire, this is not a solution to an existing problem.
I think the usefulness of such a device is limited. If you're driving on a road in the winter and suddenly encounter a patch of "black ice," it won't really do you any good to know it's going to take a mile to stop, especially if the car ahead is only a hundred feet away.
Citroen had this on the speedometer 30 years ago. Another scale representing stopping distance. <a href="http://www.steenbuck-automobiles.de/images/A_225_Citroen_ds23/DSCN7810_b750.jpg" "target="_blank">See example. The yellow numbers represent the dry stopping distance.
Nearly a free idea, but some lawyer probably killed it as they could envision some sort of "legal committment" being made by the information.
Citroen had this on the speedometer 30 years ago. Another scale representing stopping distance. <a href="http://www.steenbuck-automobiles.de/images/A_225_Citroen_ds23/DSCN7810_b750.jpg" "target="_blank">See example. The yellow numbers represent the dry stopping distance.
Nearly a free idea, but some lawyer probably killed it as they could envision some sort of "legal committment" being made by the information.
Citroen had this on the speedometer 30 years ago. Another scale representing stopping distance. See example. The yellow numbers represent the dry stopping distance.
Nearly a free idea, but some lawyer probably killed it as they could envision some sort of "legal committment" being made by the information.
Sorry. Botched the link. Admins, could you remove bad entries? Thanks!
If i were to attach a magnetic circle to each wheel, and read itwith a stationary pickup, and thinking of each circle as countingup from zero to a million, over and over... the central computerwould get a stream of relative slippage data for the differencein very tiny changes, in the slippage between wheels. With sometraining, a neural net could recognize ice conditions and grossdelta's before the driver might know. Its more than translatingthe speed given the coefficient of friction, but detecting lateralslippage and avoiding the deaths accidents, tragedies and costs ofso winter accidents on black ice.