New Ford Fusion to Offer Lane Keeping System

From Ford.com:

With many of us driving long distances to visit friends and family during the holiday season, drowsiness can easily creep up when behind the wheel. That’s why the all-new Ford Fusion will offer a Lane Keeping System (LKS) to help drivers stay between the lines.

The new Ford Fusion, which will debut at the North American International Auto Show in January, is the first mainstream midsize sedan in North America to offer this technology. Ford will roll out the Lane Keeping System to a wide range of its vehicles over the next several years. In addition to the new Fusion, the Ford Explorer also will offer the feature in 2012.

The Lane Keeping System uses a digital camera mounted on the windshield ahead of the rearview mirror, allowing the Fusion to watch the road ahead to detect an unintentional lane departure. The Ford Lane Keeping System has three levels of assistance available to the driver depending on what is happening: Lane Keeping Alert, Lane Keeping Aid and Driver Alert.

“Fusion’s Lane Keeping System combines a digital imaging sensor with our own state-of-the-art control software to process images and determine what level of warning or assistance to provide to the driver,” said Michael Kane, Ford development engineer. “We’ve put a lot of effort into ensuring the accuracy of the lane detection and the smoothness of the assist.”

The driver must turn on the Lane Keeping System. Once the vehicle speed is above 40 mph and lane markers are clearly visible on the road, an icon that looks like a car between two lanes lights up green in the instrument cluster to indicate the system has been enabled. Ford’s Lane Keeping System takes advantage of the electric power-assisted steering (EPAS) used in the new Fusion to provide a vibrating alert to the driver and then gently steer the car back into the lane if the driver doesn’t respond.

When the system detects the car is approaching the edge of the lane without a turn signal activated, the lane marker in the icon turns yellow and the steering wheel vibrates to simulate driving over rumble strips. If the driver doesn’t respond and continues to drift, the lane icon turns red and EPAS will nudge the steering and the vehicle back toward the center of the lane. If the car continues to drift, the vibration is added again along with the nudge. The driver can overcome assistance and vibration at any time by turning the steering wheel, accelerating or braking.

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