Ford Building Cars That Talk To Other Cars 239
thecarchik writes "Ford's new system works over a dedicated short-range WiFi system on a secure channel allocated by the FCC. The company says the system one-ups radar safety systems by allowing full 360-degree coverage even when there's no direct line of sight. Scenarios where this could benefit safety or traffic? Predicting collision courses with unseen vehicles, seeing sudden stops before they're visible, and spotting traffic pattern changes on a busy highway. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported in October that vehicle-to-vehicle warning systems could address nearly 80 percent of reported crashes not involving drunk drivers. As such, it could potentially save tens of thousands of lives per year."
Luckily... (Score:5, Informative)
FFS, dudes, trusting the client in a life-critical application? Srsly? Srsly?
HOW TO END 95% OF ALL TRAFFIC CRASHES (Score:3, Informative)
In other words.. those drivers who, despite not being physically impaired, nevertheless engaged in activities such as, but not limited to: tailgaiting, failing to yield right-of-way, driving too slow with reference to the speed limit and conditions, and/or performing a "rolling roadblock" by both refusing to pass the traffic to your right AND refusing to merge into the right (slow) lane so faster drivers can get past you. Those are the four most dangeous behaviors in which any driver can possibly engage. The first two directly endanger others; the last two tempt other drivers to perform dangerous maneuvers to get around a driver who has voluntarily decided to become a bottleneck. You make something tempting enough, and right or wrong, legally or illegally, drivers WILL eventually try it.
... yet they wait until the last possible moment to actually get into the left lane, despite multiple opportunities. So they cut rudely in front of other drivers, or otherwise perform a poorly planned, poorly executed maneuver. All because they couldn't plan ahead a little.
... I wonder what good these ever-sophisticated machines really are, when most of society in general and its constitutents in particular seem to accept lower standards as a sign of progress.
I suppose a distant fifth would be those drivers who just refuse to plan ahead even a little bit. For example... those drivers who know their left turn is coming up within the next 1-2 miles
If a logic-based, computer-calculated system can prevent accidents, it's only because so many accidents are 100% preventable, foreseeable, thoughtless, stupid. negligent failures to account for the knowable circumstances.
In the long run
Re:These systems which preach safety and security. (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely. Intellidrive [intellidriveusa.org] is the name for this in the US (previously VII, Vehicle Infrastructure Initiative). The plan is to specify an open protocol, some base DOT-specific applications, and then leave the field open for others to come up with creative uses for it.
And yes, the car manufacturers are on board with this. They've agreed to implement the minimum system necessary in new model cars, and anything above the minimum system is going to be how they differentiate themselves between products.
(The system is more than just car-to-car, it's car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure)
Re:Big traffic cop is watching (Score:4, Informative)
You are full of bullshit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier#Random_UUID_probability_of_duplicates [wikipedia.org]