Following on from today's post on driver-less cars, I remembered watching a great TED talk by Jennifer Healey at Intel.
She points out that a human driver has two eyes with which to scan the surroundings, and those eyes are not designed for the task. For starters, they only see clearly in one direction. To check behind, the driver stops looking where he/she is going. Not looking where you are going whilst driving at motorway speeds surrounded by other large metal objects is frequently fatal.
So what if cars could talk to each other and say things like... "I'm slowing down rapidly" or... "I'm changing lane". And other cars could listen and respond immediately and in a safe manner. That sounds like a better plan that relying on my two eyes and poor reaction time, or even worse, the concentration and lack of experience of the distracted teenager in the car behind me.
And Jennifer points out that only cars within say 100 meters of each other would need to talk, so they wouldn't require a cellular connection, just a white-space radio messaging function.
Today's more advanced cars use arrays of sensors to detect their environment and they do a pretty good job of looking at the car in front or behind. Top-end cars already have traffic sensing cruise control. But each car is an island on its own, detecting it's own necessary actions. With car-to-car communication, a car two or three cars behind on the road would already be taking action before the car immediately in front of it had reacted, cancelling out the 'traffic wave effect'.
It's simple, it's intelligent, and because it doesn't require expensive arrays of sensors in every car... it would be cheaper and more accessible to lower-end vehicles.
Let's hope the auto industry take a pragmatic view of these possibilities and deliver a solution in the not-too-distant future.
References:
Jennifer Healey - If cars could talk, accidents might be avoidable
CDC - Teen Drivers: Get the Facts
New Scientist - Shockwave Traffic Jams
She points out that a human driver has two eyes with which to scan the surroundings, and those eyes are not designed for the task. For starters, they only see clearly in one direction. To check behind, the driver stops looking where he/she is going. Not looking where you are going whilst driving at motorway speeds surrounded by other large metal objects is frequently fatal.
So what if cars could talk to each other and say things like... "I'm slowing down rapidly" or... "I'm changing lane". And other cars could listen and respond immediately and in a safe manner. That sounds like a better plan that relying on my two eyes and poor reaction time, or even worse, the concentration and lack of experience of the distracted teenager in the car behind me.
And Jennifer points out that only cars within say 100 meters of each other would need to talk, so they wouldn't require a cellular connection, just a white-space radio messaging function.
Today's more advanced cars use arrays of sensors to detect their environment and they do a pretty good job of looking at the car in front or behind. Top-end cars already have traffic sensing cruise control. But each car is an island on its own, detecting it's own necessary actions. With car-to-car communication, a car two or three cars behind on the road would already be taking action before the car immediately in front of it had reacted, cancelling out the 'traffic wave effect'.
It's simple, it's intelligent, and because it doesn't require expensive arrays of sensors in every car... it would be cheaper and more accessible to lower-end vehicles.
Let's hope the auto industry take a pragmatic view of these possibilities and deliver a solution in the not-too-distant future.
References:
Jennifer Healey - If cars could talk, accidents might be avoidable
CDC - Teen Drivers: Get the Facts
New Scientist - Shockwave Traffic Jams
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