Kia Carens Can Read Road Signs Without Radar, Camera

Kia India launched Carens with an extremely sporty design, with a lot of features and tech on offer. Priced from Rs. 9.59 lakh to Rs. 17.69 lakh (ex-showroom, New Delhi), it is a brilliant value-for-money offering. During our testing, we discovered a pretty useful safety feature, which is explained in our video below.

Kia Carens is able to read road signs, including speed limits and other traffic symbols, despite not having ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) on offer. The manufacturer has achieved this feat using GPS; instead of using radar or cameras to read speed signs, Carens uses its GPS navigation system to read the relevant road sign data that is available on servers.

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The traffic signs and symbols for many Indian roads and highways have already been fed into servers. Kia Carens can access that information for the road on which it is driving, and in our road testing, we found the information to be extremely reliable. Interestingly, this GPS system can even determine if the vehicle is being driven on the wrong side of the road, at least on major roads.

This system can also give a “children crossing ahead” voice notification when driving near schools which is a smart and practical touch. “U-turn” and “Go Slow” signs have not been added to the system yet, but OTA updates would solve that issue in the near future. Such ingenious safety systems can help make roads safer for everyone, without raising the cost too high. India is infamous for road accidents, most of which happen due to poor road manners.

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There are a lot of standard safety features on offer on Kia Carens. These include six airbags, ABS, brake assist, ESC, stability management, hill start assist, downhill braking control, rear parking sensors, highline TPMS, disc brakes on all wheels, ISOFIX child seat anchors, pretensioners & load limiters on front seatbelts, speed-sensing door locks, and impact-sensing door unlock.

Kia Carens gets a few other safety features on offer, like a rear parking camera (with adaptive guidelines), adjustable headrests (on all three rows), auto-dimming IRVMs, rain-sensing wipers, and tilt/telescopic adjustment for the steering wheel, depending on the variant selected.