OPPAMA, Japan - Parallel parking could be dropped from driver license tests, backing up would no longer be hard to do, mangled rear fenders from sloppy lane changes would be as rare as a courteous driver on a crowded rush-hour freeway and pedestrians popping out from behind parked cars would no longer be surprises if Nissan Motor has its way.

Nissan safety engineers, committed to the proposition that the car ought to be a positive part of society and an active participant in efforts to make mean streets mild, have been working diligently on safety technologies that can add to the enjoyment of driving and reduce the dangers.

A suite of such systems was rolled out Wednesday at Nissan's research center southwest of Tokyo: a parallel parking helper, a GPS-based pedestrian warning system and a side-impact collision prevention prototype chief among them.

None are ready for prime time yet, but IL was able to test them and found all to be promising.

The parking guide is a new embellishment to Nissan's 'Around View Monitor' — a year-old system available in the U.S. on 2008 Infiniti EX and models — that uses four downward-looking cameras, four sonar sensors and a lot of software to display a 360-degree view of the area around a vehicle for the driver to view on a navigation system screen.

Initially intended to help motorists avoid objects in what previously were major blind spots, the system is being updated for its second-generation debut to include an amazingly accurate program that displays the proper path a driver should follow to successfully park parallel in the toughest spots in just one try.

Unlike the complicated self-parking system employed by Lexus, the Nissan system doesn't take control of the vehicle; it merely lays down in 3-D a pair of guide lines and then, as the driver turns the steering wheel, projects the actual path the vehicle will take, overlaying it on the guide lines and beeping authoritatively when the two sets of lines are, well, lined up.

Keep the wheel steady and tap the gas and the car will follow the magic lines right into the parking pace. (Note: it even works when two- and three-point turns are required.)

We diligently kept our eyes off the road and glued to the display on the navi screen and with almost no effort, perfectly parallel-parked a rather hefty Nissan ElGrande minivan.

Nissan's pedestrian warning system uses a third-party vendor to receive GPS signals from the cell phones of those afoot and the navigation systems of vehicles on the road.

When the central computer identifies a cell phone signal and a navi system signal that appear to be on a collision course, it sends a warning to the vehicle that lights up the navigation screen with warning icon and broadcasts a verbal warning.

We tried it and got plenty of warning that a ped (a Nissan volunteer who apparently likes to be a target) was about to step out from behind a panel truck parked on the side of the road a few hundred feet ahead of us.

The system doesn't take control of the vehicle, so we could have run the poor guy down had we been in a particularly bad mood, but we never could have claimed that we didn't know he was there.

Additional safety devices demonstrated today by Nissan include the 'Intelligent seatbelt' that uses a small motor and a seat pressure sensor to, first, determine that someone has sat in the seat and second, advance the shoulder belt latch a few inches so it is close to hand and not hidden away and hard to reach between the B-pillar and the side of the seatback. The system also keeps the shoulder belt a little looser than usual until hard braking warns of impending danger, at which point it ratchets the belts in tight.

Nissan also showed off a 'smart headlight' that automatically turns on at twilight, instead of waiting an hour or two for sunset. It's particularly smart because it can tell the difference between real twilight and, say, a shadow thrown over the road by a large building.

It was developed because Nissan researchers discovered that the chances of an accident that results in serious injury or fatality is higher in the dwindling light before sunset than at any other time of day.