There's a lot of interesting automobile safety research going on in Silicon Valley. For example, Mercedes-Benz has a building in the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto where they design next-generation safety systems. My former roommate works there, and, though I probably shouldn't give details, I can say that there are some neat safety systems under development.
One tidbit: a number of stoplights in Palo Alto and Redwood City broadcast information about when they are going to change. A properly equipped car can receive that information and decide whether to proceed as usual or begin braking, even before there is a visible change. As a corollary, if the red light is about to turn green, the car can decide not to slow down.
The slowing down for a red is nice but the not slowing down because it is going to turn green is scary. My friend died in a car crash because he timed the light and saw that it was going to be green. A mild red light runner t-boned his car and that was that. I say mild red light runner because had he not timed the green perfectly he probably would still be alive.
Don't get me wrong this is promising technology but I would be hesitant to rely on it to do too much.
One more argument is that there is usually a time gap between one light turning red and the other turning green. This gap should allow most of mild red light runners to pass through safely. (At least in my city in India this is true, the time gap is as big as 5 to 8 seconds)
The systems here have a time gap too but it was not sufficient in this case. I think it's at most 1-2 seconds here.
I understand that argument but I am of the school of thought that the machine should not make decisions that can impact my safety unless it is an emergency. shaving off a few seconds on my commute is not what I would call a much of a benefit when there is a substantial possible downside.
These types of technology are unlikely to make it out of research for quite a long time. Assist and emergency operation tech seems to make it to deployment a lot faster because of exactly these issues.
The transition between research and deployment is an important period where things that recently became possible can be fully scrutinized. The goal of research is simply to make things possible. The rest is a long hard slog that not all tech makes it through.
In short, I really wouldn't worry about anything they're working on in a research facility, that's just so far away from shipping product figuring out which parts are more or less useful probably isn't worth doing at this point.
One tidbit: a number of stoplights in Palo Alto and Redwood City broadcast information about when they are going to change. A properly equipped car can receive that information and decide whether to proceed as usual or begin braking, even before there is a visible change. As a corollary, if the red light is about to turn green, the car can decide not to slow down.