Toyota Safety Technology Media Tour

Driving simulator

Glimpse of the media tour

The "Toyota Safety Technology Media Tour" was held for domestic and foreign media on July 21(thurs.) and July 22(fri.) at the Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) Higashi-Fuji Technical Center (Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture).

Toyota views the realization of a society that places utmost importance on traffic safety and mobility as one of its top management priorities and holds it to its core guiding principle of supplying safe products. As such, Toyota has long conducted safety-related activities based on three pillars: development of safe motor vehicles, educational activities concerning traffic safety, and participation in traffic environment development. Learning from real-world accidents and continuously striving to enhance the quality of products and services is Toyota's fundamental approach to the development of safe vehicles.

The technologies to be unveiled in the Media Tour include a Pre-collision System (PCS) with collision-avoidance assist, glare preventing adaptive driving beams (ADB), a pop-up hood and an emergency-response technology.

* Integrated Safety Management Concept: Coordinating the individual safety technologies and systems used in vehicles. It embodies Toyota's thinking on future safety technology and vehicle development.

Safety Technologies Unveiled

Technologies that contribute to safety for pedestrians and elderly drivers, aiming at reducing traffic casualties

Rear-End Collision and Pedestrian Accident Avoidance Assist

In contrast to the current PCS, which is designed to predict collisions under certain situations and aims to reduce collision damage, the PCS under development is aimed at addressing rear-end collisions, accidents involving pedestrians and it helps to avoid collisions. The system uses millimeter-wave radar and stereo cameras to detect pedestrians and vehicles in front. In addition, the system emits near-infrared beams to enhance visibility at night.

Lane Departure Prevention

This system, an advancement of the PCS designed to avoid rear-end collisions and accidents involving pedestrians, addresses lane deviation by integrating control of the brakes and the steering. The system is being developed to comprehensively monitor a broad set of circumstances outside the vehicle, including the location of roadside obstacles and approaching vehicles, evaluate collision risks, change the direction of the vehicle and navigate a safe route, thus helping the driver avoid an accident.

Contributes to nighttime visibility, so that high-beam light from an ADB-fitted vehicle is partially shielded to prevent glare that can interfere with the visibility of drivers of vehicles ahead and of oncoming vehicles. This is aimed to allow drivers to maintain near-high beam illumination to contribute to nighttime visibility and to contribute to a reduction in accidents involving pedestrians and other vehicles.

This technology helps reduce pedestrian head injury caused by collision with a vehicle-even when a vehicle has a low hood with limited space underneath-by automatically raising the rear of the hood to increase the space underneath.

This technology focuses on "reverse driving" especially among the aging society on highways which could lead to fatal accidents. Warning is made to the driver through images and sound once the vehicle is detected to be driving in reverse on the map of a car navigation system or GPS.

Sudden cardiovascular irregularity (such as ventricular fibrillation) while driving can cause a driver to lose consciousness, thus creating a potentially dangerous situation. Toyota has started to develop a system to monitor cardiovascular functions through the driver's grasp of the steering wheel and detect risks, contributing to the prevention of major accidents caused by sudden changes in the driver's physical condition.