Alongside the usual raft of cosmetic and equipment upgrades, the latest edition of the Toyota Crown debuts new vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) safety systems.
The Japanese giant claims that the Crown is the first mass produced car to make use of the the country’s ITS (intelligent transport systems) setup. Japan’s ITS standard allows vehicles to communicate with each other, as well as road infrastructure, via a reserved communication channel at 760MHz.
Crown models equipped with ITS Connect can communicate with ITS-equipped road inrastructure, enabling a number of new safety features.
With the Right-Turn Collision Caution, enabled road-side equipment can detect any potential hazards that lurk out of sight at right turn, allowing the car the warn the driver through audio and visual alerts.
Signal Change Advisory allows the car to display a countdown timer showing the number of seconds before the ITS-enabled traffic light changes from red to green. If the driver approaches an ITS red light without slowing down, the system can provide audio and visual warnings.
It’s unknown at this stage how many pieces of ITS-enabled infrastructure are deployed or planned for Japan.
Using its vehicle-to-vehicle communication gear, the Crown’s adaptive cruise control is able to adjust its speed based on the acceleration and deceleration patterns of other V2V-equipped cars around it. This, Toyota claims, aids safety, minimises speed fluctuations and helps to smooth out traffic flow.
The Crown is also able to display the distance and direction of movement of nearby V2V-equipped emergency vehicles.
The various Toyota Crown derivatives, the Athlete, Royal and Majesta, are sold primarily in Japan and China.
