Car Talk Technology Moving Closer
If cars could talk, we might well hear: “Slow down! You’re going to hit that car!”
Safety belts and air bags have reduced driving fatalities, made cars safer, and saved lives. Now, the federal government believes accidents can be further reduced if cars are able to “talk” with each other through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology.
The Department of Transportation's (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced it will begin taking steps to enable V2V technology in future cars.
News outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, Bloomberg, and many others, report US regulators may propose rules to mandate V2V technology in new cars by 2017.
The “car talk” would involve vehicles exchanging basic safety data, such as speed and position, ten times per second. According to the government announcement:
V2V communications can provide the vehicle and driver with 360-degree situational awareness to address additional crash situations – including those, for example, in which a driver needs to decide if it is safe to pass on a two-lane road (potential head-on collision), make a left turn across the path of oncoming traffic, or in which a vehicle approaching at an intersection appears to be on a collision course. In those situations, V2V communications can detect threats hundreds of yards from other vehicles that cannot be seen, often in situations in which on-board sensors alone cannot detect the threat.
Although the applications currently being developed provide warnings, they do not automatically brake or steer a vehicle.
As for privacy and security concerns, DOT says the only information sent is basic safety data and does not involve exchanging or recording personal information or tracking vehicle movements.
V2V technology has already been successfully road-tested. Since August 2012, nearly 3,000 vehicles have been participating in a safety pilot model deployment of V2V and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) safety applications in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The findings of that study are expected to be released within the next months, which undoubtedly prompted the DOT announcement.
"V2V crash avoidance technology has game-changing potential to significantly reduce the number of crashes, injuries and deaths on our nation's roads," said NHTSA Acting Administrator David Friedman. "Decades from now, it's likely we'll look back at this time period as one in which the historical arc of transportation safety considerably changed for the better, similar to the introduction of standards for seat belts, airbags, and electronic stability control technology."
