Nissan's pedestrian tracker

A new early-warning system for cars will track pedestrians through their mobiles and sound a warning if there is any chance of them being run down.

The system works both day and night through GPS tracking in cars and mobiles, even if the pedestrian cannot be seen by the driver, and should be in production within five years.

It is being developed by Nissan and is one of five safety breakthroughs being fast-tracked by the Japanese carmaker. The others are an ultra-sensitive 'smart' automatic headlight system, rear parking monitor system, all-round collision warning system and intelligent seatbelts with motorised retractors that activate in panic braking.

Nissan believes the pedestrian tracking system could cut fatalities by up to 10 per cent in Japan, saving thousands of lives in Japan alone, while also boosting safety in Europe and the USA where pedestrian deaths are increasing.

“Pedestrian-related accidents in Japan are a big worry,” the corporate vice-president of the Nissan Research Centre, Haruyoshi Kumura, said yesterday.

"Thirty percent of the 5744 people killed on Japanese roads last year were pedestrians, many of them elderly.

The pedestrian safety system links GPS units in cars and mobiles, using a complicated tracking system in the car to predict if the pedestrian is likely to walk in front of the vehicle. It then warns the driver using voice messages and icons on the car’s navigation system. A future update would sound a similar warning to the pedestrian.

Although still in the development phase, Nissan expects the system is expected to be widely available in its cars in Japan within five years at the same price as a regular GPS navigation system. It says the system is a priority because of the increasing number of people who plug into iPods and other portable entertainment systems and cannot hear traffic.

Nissan is aiming the system at Japan first because GPS systems in mobiles have been required by government since 2004 and by 2010 all mobiles, by law, must have GPS systems among their standard features.

Nissan researchers say Japan, like Australia, has one of the highest rates of mobile phone ownership in the world and the potential for the alert system is huge, particularly if it can also alert the pedestrian. There are more than 91 million Japanese people use 3G technology with in-built navigation systems in their mobiles and about

136 million use 2G technology with in-built GPS systems.