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Toyota reveals safety research car at CES

One day before the International Consumer Electronics Show opened its doors in Las Vegas, Toyota took the wraps off the highest-tech Lexus LS ever made. The car -- with spinning sensors and probing lasers galore -- is meant to demonstrate safety features that could be coming to production cars someday soon. Called the Advanced Safety Research Vehicle, it sure looked like some of the autonomous self-driving vehicles we saw at the DARPA Challenge, but Toyota stressed that a robot car is not the goal.

'27% would drive into floodwater'

A DEVIL-MAY-CARE attitude amongst drivers is commonplace when it comes to flooded roads, according to a survey. Nearly 2% would ignore a road-closed sign, while 42% would blindly follow the vehicle in front if it managed to cross a flooded road successfully, the poll shows. Around a quarter of drivers (27%) would attempt to go through moving floodwater nearly 12in (30cm) deep, according to the Populus survey conducted for the Environment Agency and the AA.

Kia Picanto wins design award

Kia's growing design prowess isn't going unnoticed. The firm's latest prize comes from the iF design awards, for the three-door Picanto. The award recognizes design quality alongside a number of other criteria, including workmanship, innovation and eco-friendliness.