Gasgoo Munich-Every automaker promises a driving experience that is "smarter, more worry-free, and more seamless." Yet when addressing the trade-off between safety and convenience, one carmaker offered a view that defies industry orthodoxy: if the goal is absolute safety, the system will constantly prompt the driver to "take over, take over."
That statement came from Naoya Fujimoto, an executive officer at Nissan.
In industry parlance, a "take over" alert usually signals a subpar user experience. But for a safety system, the prompt isn't necessarily a sign of technical failure; it can mean the system is bowing out because it cannot guarantee safety. Nissan has made its choice: safety comes first.
That choice ties back to a goal Nissan repeats often: achieving zero traffic fatalities.
Nissan is not alone in this ambition. Numerous automakers have laid out visions for zero deaths or zero casualties. The real question is: when a company translates that goal into technology, what trade-offs is it willing to make?
Recently, Hideo Takagi, deputy general manager of Nissan's Beijing R&D Division in China, centered his speech at the 20th China Road Traffic Safety Forum on "safety." Fujimoto, in discussions with media including Gasgoo, circled back to the same theme.
What matters is not the repetition of "safety first" slogans, but Nissan's willingness to confront hard realities: how to balance safety against convenience, where the limits of AI lie, how to approach partnerships for autonomous driving, and what variables China's unique road conditions introduce.
That gives Nissan's recent discussion of "zero fatalities" more weight than mere corporate rhetoric.
What Does "Safety First" Actually Mean?
How Nissan chooses when safety and convenience collide.
Fujimoto was blunt: in this era, no technology can deliver 100% perfect safety alongside 100% driving convenience. If the priority is absolute safety, user convenience suffers, and the system will frequently flash "take over" alerts. For Nissan, safety is the primary objective.
The key point is that Nissan openly admits safety technology may come at the cost of convenience—and it is willing to pay that price. In an industry obsessed with making driving "smarter, more worry-free, and more seamless," publicly acknowledging that "take over" alerts are a potential consequence of prioritizing safety is, in itself, a clear trade-off.
Naoya Fujimoto
Nissan's definition of safety extends beyond protecting drivers and passengers inside the vehicle. Discussing the protection of vulnerable road users, Fujimoto included pedestrians and cyclists in the "zero fatalities" goal. This elevates active safety to the same level of importance as passive safety, with Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) serving as a core technology in that domain.
In his keynote address, Takagi expanded the discussion to a broader systemic framework. Nissan views traffic safety not as a challenge for vehicles alone, but as a comprehensive effort across three levels: vehicle, individual, and society. The vehicle level focuses on technical safety; the individual level on driver awareness and habits; and the societal level on the safety of both people and vehicles.
Yet "safety first" is merely an attitude. Whether that philosophy can be realized depends entirely on the technology behind it.
How to Deliver on the "Zero Fatalities" Goal
AI is currently a critical tool for Nissan to implement technology and enhance vehicle safety.
Fujimoto noted that AI technology is evolving rapidly, with China's AI sector standing out in particular. Nissan is actively applying AI through its "AI-Defined Vehicle" (AIDV) concept. The foundation of AI capability lies in data, and with over 80 years of industry experience, Nissan has accumulated a vast amount of traffic scenario data.
The true value of that data is helping the system understand differences in driver behavior across markets. Fujimoto offered a vivid example: a Chinese driver in Japan might find local speeds too slow, while a driver accustomed to Japanese roads might feel nervous navigating intersections in China.
Perceptions of a "comfortable speed" vary by market. Nissan's approach is to analyze local driving habits and the behavior of other road users in each market, then feed those insights back into localized product technology.
These regional differences are not limited to drivers; pedestrians and cyclists vary as well. The behavior patterns of pedestrians and cyclists in Japan, the U.S., and China all differ, posing a significant challenge for developers. Adapting to the real needs of China's road users is a key mission for Nissan's R&D.
Take driver monitoring as an example: Nissan can identify some distracted driving solely through steering wheel signals. However, that approach only detects hand movements, missing signs of drowsiness, zoning out, or phone use. DMS cameras, which track face and eye movement, fill that blind spot. Currently, most of Nissan's global models with Level 2 autonomy and above are equipped with DMS.
This case reflects Nissan's pragmatic approach to safety technology: algorithms and data can solve part of the problem, but fully perceiving driver state still requires hardware sensors and real-world scenarios. Daring to admit the limits of technology is far rarer than claiming to handle every possible scenario.
The localized development of autonomous driving faces similar realistic constraints.
Image Source: Dongfeng Nissan
The Nissan N7 is the first model jointly developed with Momenta, featuring end-to-end driving assistance technology. Fujimoto emphasized that autonomous driving technology must be rooted in local road conditions; otherwise, it cannot understand local driving habits.
While Nissan continues to refine its proprietary driver assistance technology, it remains open to external partnerships. Its collaboration with Momenta has already validated the feasibility of joint development.
Since Nissan views traffic safety as a systemic effort involving vehicles, individuals, and society, relying solely on vehicle intelligence is not enough. Fujimoto noted that Nissan has launched a V2X cooperation project with the local government in Suzhou. V2X can compensate for the blind spots of individual vehicle perception, such as identifying road users emerging suddenly from shadows, and is expected to help vehicles autonomously identify and avoid traffic risks in the future.
However, implementing this technology depends heavily on infrastructure construction and maintenance quality. For that reason, Fujimoto believes China is well-suited for V2X development, largely due to strong government support. In contrast, many overseas markets face much higher hurdles in implementation due to aging infrastructure, even if they possess the necessary V2X technology.
In his view, it is not just V2X; China is developing faster in many technologies related to intelligent connectivity and electric vehicles. Technical practices born in the Chinese market are now radiating outward to other global markets. This further illustrates that the path to "zero fatalities" depends not only on the technical trade-offs automakers make inside the vehicle, but also on local infrastructure and complex real-world traffic environments.
While many automakers have enshrined "zero fatalities" in their corporate visions, the real test lies not in setting the goal, but in recognizing the boundaries of technology. It requires seeing the realistic differences across markets and making pragmatic, continuous iterations within the complex constraints of a systemic engineering challenge.
