Nissan gets serious about booze and diesel
 

ATSUGI, Japan (Reuters) - Nissan, Japan's third-biggest carmaker, is getting serious about drink-driving and clean diesel -- though it's certainly not mixing the two.

At a brand new campus bathed in light, surrounded by water and a view of the mountains to the west of Tokyo, Nissan engineers work on the technology for tomorrow's cars.

Researchers here have developed various gadgets to keep drunks off the road, group officials said on Tuesday.

"In Japan, we have a lot of road deaths due to drinking," said Kazuhiro Doi, general manager of technology marketing at the Nissan Advanced Technology Centre (NATC).

Working by the motto "Trusted Driving Pleasure", Nissan is aiming to reduce the number of incidents involving drivers of its cars to 'virtually zero', though it doesn't give precise targets.

A test car in the research centre contains a series of devices for judging whether a driver has been drinking that work less intrusively than alcohol-lock tests, where a driver has to breath into a detector before starting the engine.

Nissan's car has sensors underneath the driver's head-rest and on the gear stick. When these sensors detect alcohol, the car issues an announcement and a message on the dashboard advising the driver not to start.

Source: [url=http://uk.reuters.com/article/motoringNews/idUKNOA32550420071023]Reuters UK[/url]