Toyota Motor Corp – in an unusual move for the cut-throat car business – has decided to share with rivals an automated safety system that uses self-driving technology to keep cars from crashing.
Known as the Guardian System, the technology will take control of a car and steer it around an impending crash or accelerate out of the path of an oncoming vehicle that is running a red light. The system, due to hit the road early next decade, has the potential to save so many lives that Toyota felt compelled to share it with any company that would like to use it, Gill Pratt, head of the automaker’s Research Institute, said at CES in Las Vegas on Jan 7.