Fake city for testing self-driving cars opens

DETROIT — A miniature city, complete with streets, intersections, traffic lights, sidewalks, construction obstacles and faux buildings, opened Monday at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The miniature city promises to be one of the nation's top testing centers for what could become a whole new generation of transportation: connected and automated cars.

"It's literally a simulation of a city," Mobility Transformation Center Director Peter Sweatman told the Detroit Association of Business Economists in January. "It's not by any means a conventional test track. There are no squealing tires here."

To get across the point, guests at the opening ceremonies were seeing various other technologies in use, such as a sensor that monitors a driver's attention and lessens activity when he or she is distracted; how a pedestrian's smartphone can alert the walker and the driver of a possible collision; an automatic emergency braking system to avoid crashes into pedestrians, bicyclists and objects; and a system that counts how many people are in a vehicle.