Experts say that the intelligent highway will save more lives than seat belts, airbags, and electronic stability control. For sheer lifesaving capacity, nothing in the history of the auto industry will come close to it.
The reason for the superlatives around the technology is simple: Vehicle infrastructure integration (VII), as it's known, will allow cars to talk to one another, as well as to traffic lights and stop signs. It will enable them to communicate with municipalities, government agencies, car dealerships, and traffic control centers.
As a result, cars won't collide. They'll "know" when to slow down, when to turn, and when it's safe to enter an intersection. They'll prevent drivers from making dangerous lane changes and enable them to head-off multi-car crashes.
Click on the image below to see 13 examples of these potentially lifesaving technologies.
Using GPS and DSRC, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication could take place between cars as far as a quarter-mile apart. (Source: General Motors)
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If you've always dreamed of hanging with the pit crew at Indy, your opportunity has arrived. Littelfuse Inc., a KV Racing sponsor, is sponsoring the Speed2Design contest. Winners will attend the race, visit the pits, and talk engineer-to-engineer with crew members.
The Speed2Design promotion is connected to five Indy Racing League series races in Indianapolis (May 27); Fort Worth, Texas (June 9); Qingdao, China (Aug. 19); Sonoma, Calif. (Aug. 26); and Fontana, Calif. (September 15). Littelfuse will randomly select five participants to attend each Speed2Design event.
Click on the link to access the entry form for the
Speed2Design contest.
The second part of the problem is what happens when a sensor or the communication system fails? Whose fault is it going to be. I can just see a boat load of personal injury lawyers going after everybody with deep pockets in the supply stream because the car didn't tell the driver that the guy in front of him had his brake lights on.
I can confidently say that much of the Push behind all of the ideas shown here are intended to "help" the distracted driver to be safer.....And then slide #5 of 13 states that Automakers are contemplating putting V2V apps on Smart Phones.
Many Rational comments about benefits of good drivers, outweighing extra-sensory-perception of the automobile; however, in one instance, I'm very excited for the day when my car will talk to the Stop Lights.This will be a huge turn in the RIGHT direction from where I'm currently standing.
I live in South Florida where many municipalities have joined together and created a monster – The "Smart" traffic light.It is blatantly misnamed, and is the most frustrating robot ever created --- liken to the 1980's when computers were first becoming commonplace, and you remember the common colloquialism, "computers don't make mistakes" --- (remember that battle-cry-?)
These Miami-Dade-Broward-West-Palm Beach Traffic lights are proudly displayed by the governing bodies and over-zealously snap pictures of your license-plate, happily running up city revenues.Trouble is, they burn steady-red for minutes on end, presumably thinking they have the superior intelligence on traffic patterns – which they do not.Daily I approach the same Green-Arrow, only to be struck with a 4-minute Red, because my vehicle was only "approaching" the sensors at 30mph, and not stopped on top of it.
Yes, I am excited to see the day when I my car can "talk" to these lights. Oh, I'll have a thing or two to say, for sure.
Your exactly right, ervin. History has shown people so easily trading their freedoms for security, safety, and health care.
In this country, we expected the individual to provide their own security, safety and health care in exchange for the freedom to be able to do just that. (Plus put up with some inequites in the system.)
Now we have one political party catering to human strengths and one political party catering to human weaknesses - what a mess!
@ChasChas- Did you hear that England is going to switch to driving on the right-hand side of the road? They're using a conservative approach. The first phase will be trucks....
Al, I agree that distracting user interfaces could be a problem if this isn't done correctly. I can't really speak to some of the solutions, but I know that automotive suppliers are working on this issue.
ChasChas, you are correct on both counts. This technology will really start to show its effects when all vehicles have it. And, yes, there could be a problem with cars "chickening out" when the weather is bad. I could also see traffic jams occurring because the vehicles will be too conservative.
I guess I have a hard time understanding why we should spend a lot of money, time and energy trying to fix the cars, which aren't really a problem, instead of trying to fix the drivers, which are a problem.
Apps currently exist for V2V (like WAZE) that use simple crowdsourcing so that people can report accidents, traffic jams, speed traps, police and can update roads, landmarks, house numbers.
A new book by Thomas Edison's great-grandniece takes on the notion that he was a lone-wolf inventor and replaces it with an image of a man who ascribed great value to the ideas of colleagues.
In response to rising interest in autonomous vehicles, the federal government has called upon states not to authorize operation of self-driving cars, except for the purpose of testing.
With LEDs dropping in price virtually every year, automakers have begun employing them, not only on luxury vehicles, but on entry-level models, as well.
Using almost 200 light-emitting diodes in the front and back of the new 2014 CTS, Cadillac designers are showing how LEDs can change the character of a vehicle.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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