Aside from motorists, Honda wants to keep pedestrians safe

Honda is pushing to make roads safer for both motorists and pedestrians. It's why they've been developing new technology, including the newest version Honda Sensing 360 in a bid to make roads safer for everyone. Now that their cars are a lot safer, Honda now wants to keep pedestrians away from danger.

The automaker has teamed up with Japanese conglomerate Softbank and is testing a new system in Hokkaido, Japan to keep pedestrians safe via their smartphones. The system works by notifying the pedestrian if they're about to be involved in an accident, allowing them to take evasive action and prevent a possible collision with the vehicle. According to Honda, this will help protect pedestrians who cannot be seen by vehicles due to obstacles.

Aside from notifying the pedestrian, the system will also alert the driver about the presence of the pedestrian. Furthermore, cars will also communicate with other vehicles when driving through areas where pedestrians will be harder to see and relay the information to older vehicles that lack the latest tech and recognition functions. As a result, even older without Honda Sensing safety suite could benefit from the new tech.

The system will mainly depend on cloud communication and 5G technology, in this case, Softbank's mobile network. However, the vehicles would also be able to directly communicate with pedestrians as well.

There are no details on what kind of notifications pedestrians will receive. It could be via text or a notification alert that would catch their attention. The latter would catch someone's attention, especially if it's similar to the NDRRMC's rainfall alert warning.

Honda says the technology is currently being tested in Japan alone. However, their goal is to complete it by March 2022. There's no word yet whether the system will be exclusive to Japan, or it will be available in other markets at later date. Hopefully, it does make its way outside of Japan because it will help save a lot more lives.

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