It feels like just yesterday when Toyota was showing off its progress surrounding driverless cars.

This latest automotive fada welcome addition for those who hate the rigors of a daily commutedefinitely still has years left of research before car manufacturers are ready to abandon the wheel for good. (Or, at the very least, turn it over to a computer instead of a driver).

Should this happen, however, it likely won't be Toyota leading the charge. According to the Associated Press, Toyota's deputy chief safety technology officer has let slip that the company doesn't appear as interested in removing the driver from the equation as it was previously. To Toyota, the company would rather work to improve the relationship between the car and its driverusing technologies to assist efforts behind the wheel, not replace them entirely.

"Toyota will not be developing a driverless car," Seigo Kuzumaki said.

Instead, various Toyota executives discussed the company's efforts toward what they call an "Automated Highway Driving Assist" (AHDA) system at the fourth annual Toyota Advanced Safety Seminar, held yesterday in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The system would use three key technologies to bolster a driver's capabilities during a typical commute.

The first, Dynamic Radar Cruise Control, would employ radar to ensure that drivers are keeping a specified margin between them and the vehicle in front of them when they're using cruise control. The second, Lane Trace Control, uses the same radar in conjunction with a forward-facing camera installed in the vehicle to analyze a road's lane markings (as well as vehicles in front of it). An automated system, for lack of a better way to phrase it, ensures that drivers stay within the lines without getting too close to anything in front of them.

And finally, Toyota's Predictive and Interactive Human Machine Interface (HMI) will check that a driver is paying attention to his or her surroundings. Using an infrared camera and touch sensors, the system will be able to determine the direction of a driver's face, as well as whether he or she is actually gripping the wheel. If not, the system will let the driver know. (Sorry, knee drivers.)

"Toyota's vision is of a world without traffic fatalities, and these advanced connected and automated vehicle technologies hold the potential to revolutionize automotive safety. We are committed to bringing advanced active safety systems to market as quickly as possible and will make them accessible to a broad range of drivers," Kuzumaki said in a statement.

Toyota expects to be able to roll out these new safety systems to all of its U.S. vehicles by 2017.

Toyota is one of 13 founding members of the University of Michigan's Mobility Transformation Center (MTC) Leadership Circle, a major public-private R&D initiative announced Friday that "aims to revolutionize the movement of people and goods in society."

Specifically, members want to develop a "commercially viable system of connected and automated vehicles," which aims to be operation in Ann Arbor by 2021. Other members include Ford, General Motors, Honda, Nissan, and Verizon Communications.

Last month, transportation officials released a report that highlights the safety benefits of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications tech, and asked the public to submit their thoughts on how the Department of Transportation should regulate it. The report, from the DOT's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), found that V2V tech like left-turn assist and intersection movement assist could stop up to 592,000 crashes per year, saving more than 1,000 lives.

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 4 p.m. ET.

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