Visteon named finalist for innovative driver awareness system

ITS (Intelligent Transportation Society) of America has named Visteon Corporation (NYSE: VC) a finalist in the Best of ITS Awards. The Visteon Light Vehicle Integrated Vehicle Based Safety System (IVBSS), a comprehensive driver awareness system, is now in the running to win under the competition’s Best Innovative Products category.

Visteon offers a range of technologies designed to enhance a driver’s awareness of road and traffic conditions. The IVBSS system fully integrates a suite of crash warning features that includes forward collision warning, road departure warning, lane change merge alerts and blind spot detection. These systems provide the driver with situational awareness of the vehicle’s surroundings.

“While these features cannot substitute for safe driving, they can potentially increase the driver’s awareness of road conditions and improve response time to potential hazards,” explains Debby Bezzina, Visteon electronics program manager for the project. “This is very important as driver distraction and congestion are increasing.”

Visteon’s IVBSS system will be featured in a special presentation for Best of ITS Awards finalists at the 15th World Congress on ITS & the 2008 ITS America Annual Meeting on Monday, Nov. 17 in New York. The winners will be announced at that time. Bezzina will attend the congress on Visteon’s behalf.

ITS is the leading advocate for technologies that improve the safety, security and efficiency of the nation’s surface transportation system. Its 2008 annual meeting is the largest event in the world for ITS leaders, policy makers and other industry professionals.

“This recognition is quite an honor for Visteon, which is committed to driving innovation in our automotive electronics, interiors and climate control products,” notes Bezzina.

At the congress, Bezzina, along with other Visteon employees, will be presenting at the following sessions:

Interactive Session 30187: The Process for Developing an Effective Multi-Modal Warning System for the Integration of Alerts from Multiple Subsystems – The paper describes the methods used to develop the DVI system for IVBSS. Visteon authors include Dinu Madau, Colleen Serafin and Bezzina; University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) authors include Omer Tsimhoni and Paul A. Green. Bezzina, along with Madau, will participate in the interactive session

AM36: U.S. Department of Transportation Integrated Vehicle Based Safety Systems (IVBSS) Initiative. Bezzina is one of the presenters at this session; she will present the light vehicle IVBSS design and status.

AM43: Human Machine Interface for Vehicle Infrastructure Integration. Bezzina is also presenting at this session, she will describe the difficulties with designing an intuitive and easy to use human machine interface for an integrated system. The presentation, as well as the research for it, was developed by Visteon’s Serafin, Madau and Bezzina.