Peer to Peer Networking for Road Traffic

alecclews writes "The BBC is reporting on some German research to allow the exchange of information between road vehicles about travel conditions using peer to peer networking (I assume some sort of mesh). Cars or bikes experiencing problems would pass data that would ripple down the chain of vehicles behind them. 'For example, cars could spot oil on the road by combining temperature readings with wheel traction information. A wheel slipping on the road even though the temperature was not low enough for frost or ice would suggest oil or another slippery substance was present. Once a car detected this sort of danger, information about it would be generated and passed down the line of vehicles approaching the patch of oil.'"

good and bad

[mastershake_phd]

Could prevent pileups at the least. Of course anyone with such a system could potentially be tracked.

IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

It's application like this that should make the need for more IP address space obvious. There are other ways, but nothing is so elegantly simple as handling your car's computer as just another device on the network, addressable on the Internet when possible. In the not-too-distant future, it should be possible to access your car's performance data without buying expensive equipment from the manufacturer.

look for abuse potential before implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

As with all things good (and automated), we should be looking for abuse potential before implementation. For instance, could the system be hacked to:

a) provide erroneous information (general nuisance)
b) provide erroneous information to cause intentional lockup (i.e. a special-interests group publicity/demonstration)
c) provide erroneous information so vehicles are forced to not follow in the footsteps of a vehicle (black cars/helicopters that dont want witnesses for some secret CIA operation, yadda yadda)
d) provide erroneous information to create a disruption of traffic flow so a terrorist attack can be carried out without hope of police/military vehicles arriving.

Most of these examples are a stretch, but this sort of thing SHOULD be considered and studied and holes plugged first.

Snow crash

[LiquidCoooled]

This reminds me of snowcrash:

Out in the world beyond his yard, there are other yards with other doggies just like him. These aren't nasty dogs. They are all his friends.

The closest neighbor doggie is far away, farther than he can see. But he can hear this doggie bark sometimes, when a bad person approaches his yard. He can hear other neighbor doggies, too, a whole pack of them stretching off into the distance, in all directions. He belongs to a big pack of nice doggies.

He and the other nice doggies bark whenever a stranger comes into their yard, or even near it. The stranger doesn't hear him, but all the other doggies in the pack do. If they live nearby, they get excited. They wake up and get ready to do bad things to that stranger if he should try to come into their yard.

When a neighbor doggie barks at a stranger, pictures and sounds and smells come into his mind along with the bark. He suddenly knows what that stranger looks like. What he smells like. How he sounds. Then, if that stranger should come anywhere near his yard, he will recognize him. He will help spread the bark along to other nice doggies so that the entire pack can all be prepared to fight the stranger.

Re:IPv6

[JPriest]

In the not-too-distant future, it should be possible to access your car's performance data without buying expensive equipment from the manufacturer.

So you think IPv6 suddenly means auto manufacturers will stop being so proprietary?

Re:Great idea!

[NtroP]

They would ban any such system that let people decide what got sent.

Right, 'cause this system will never be cracked and "banning" something automatically stops people from doing it, right?

A similar objection

[dsanfte]

We once had this idea for a global voice network. Everyone would have a number and accept calls by default, and people could talk to each other. One guy on Slashdot knew better, though. He informed us that people could call businesses with bomb threats, for example, and disrupt the economy. Adults could call children and try to abduct them. Random businesses could harass individuals with marketing calls. Loopholes abounded and there was no way to fix the system without breaking it more.

We would have called this a telephone network, but we had to give up on it since its security was obviously so flawed. Thankfully that guy on Slashdot saved us all that wasted infrastructure money. Nothing good would have come of it anyway.