There is a lot of debate about autonomous cars, but there is already the existing technology needed for V2V where each car talks to others... the benefits are interesting - a police car could 'tell' the car in front to stop / the road network could control the cruise control of cars to help the flow patterns in busy traffic (e.g. the equivalent of variable speed cameras) / buses could tell private cars to pause to let them through / etc.
As you slam on the brakes, a car whizzes in front of you, having run a red light that might recently have been yellow. How did you know to stop? Your car told you, and if it hadn't, there might have been a serious accident. How did your car know to stop? Well, the car that ran the red light told it.
When we think of connected cars, it's common to think of something that exists in the distant future, where cars are driving themselves and as such need to know what's happening on the road. However, connected cars have applications beyond self-driving.
People, unfortunately, break the rules of the road all the time, and sometimes there's just no way to anticipate a potentially fatal incident. But the technology that can warn drivers of an impending accident could help put an end to accidents caused by reckless drivers. Not only that, but this technology will appear in our cars – self-driving or otherwise – within the next few years.
Is this fantasy, or a reality coming to you very soon... I suspect the latter, and I am not sure it is a benefit...
- hackers
- disenfranchising the driver
- de-skilling the driver
Alasdair