Word: chrysler
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Meanwhile, virtually every major automaker is spending heavily to make the dream come true. Chrysler has the 1.3-mile-long test bed I'm bouncing along in Chelsea, Michigan. General Motors is outfitting a convoy of 10 Buick LeSabres that are scheduled to make a test run next year on a modified stretch of I-15 outside San Diego. Five leading Japanese automakers, meanwhile, are members of a government-led consortium that turned a four-mile stretch of new expressway near the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics into a smartway proving ground...
...jumps onto the smartway? What if a driver in the auto lane decides to step on the brakes? What if a computer crashes? Do all the cars follow suit? And then whom do you sue--the driver, the carmaker or the programmer? "With all that can go wrong," asked Chrysler chairman Robert Eaton in a speech in Dearborn, Michigan, last week, expressing some of the industry's concerns, "will we all spend the rest of our lives in court...
...doubt, engineering solutions for most of these problems. Honda, for example, claims its automated driving system can safely reduce the gap between vehicles traveling 35 m.p.h. to 6 ft. while retaining a 3-ft. margin of safety. But margins of safety are in the eye of the beholder, as Chrysler's Zyburt and I discover about halfway around one of the track's cobblestone lanes. "This is where it gets rough on our test drivers," he warns me, just as, on cue, the Jeep slams to a halt, throwing us painfully against our seat belts. "Oops," Zyburt says sheepishly...
...Chrysler, for one, seems to have accepted the technology's limitations. Their smartway prototype--with a wire embedded in each lane to give the cars a reference point--is intended only as a test bed for putting the bodies and chassis of new cars through their paces. Chrysler figures the track can cut the time it takes to simulate the punishment the average car undergoes in 100,000 miles from six weeks to two. For the foreseeable future, however, the company doesn't plan to transfer its technology from the lab to the open road. "This stuff is not ready...
...DICK CHRYSLER (R) District 8 (Central--part of Lansing...