Opel Eye 1 Jul 2008

Car manufacturer Opel is introducing a new technology that improves driving safety, reduces stress and can even prevent you from accumulating speeding tickets.

The Opel Eye system aids drivers in two ways. Its Lane Departure Warning alerts drivers when they unintentionally veer out of their lane; while its Traffic Sign Detection function reads speed limit and "no overtaking" signs and displays them on the car's instrument panel. Depending on light conditions, this latter system can spot a road sign at up to 100 metres. Upon doing so, it repeatedly photographs it and compares the resulting images to road signs stored in its database. If a match occurs, the sign is displayed as a symbol in the centre of the driver's instrument panel. To see this process in action, check out the video below:

Exciting stuff, eh? However, it isn't the most usable implementation. Thomas Baekdal points out that a far better solution would be to incorporate the road sign information into the speedometer. In this way, drivers wouldn't need look at so many different areas of their dashboard and could also gauge their current speed compared to the legal speed limit.