NTSB Calls For Wireless Tech To Enable Vehicles To Talk To Each Other 153
Lucas123 writes "In the aftermath of a school bus accident last year, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week called for cars, trucks and buses to be equipped with machine-to-machine communications technology that could help vehicles avoid accidents by knowing what other vehicles are doing. In the bus accident, a Mack truck sped through an intersection slamming into the rear of the bus, killing one and injuring more than a dozen others. 'Systems such as connected vehicle technology could have provided an active warning to the school bus driver of the approaching truck as he began to cross the intersection,' the NTSB stated in its report. Among others, Intel is working with National Taiwan University on M2M technology that would allow vehicles the exchange of data, allowing each to know what's going on around them. 'We're even imagining that in the future cars would be able to ask other cars, "Hey, can I cut into your lane?" Then the other car would let you in,' said Jennifer Healey, a research scientist with Intel."
Re:Or.... (Score:3, Funny)
That's Richard Nixon posting from 1973.
Re:"Hey, can I cut into your lane?" (Score:4, Funny)
[A] It had better not turn into a universal tracking system.
Hello, OnStar? Someone here is getting uppity about their "civil rights"; Can you please turn on the microphone and GPS tracking, lock the doors, turn off the engine, while we sit here and listen to their futile screams? Sure, I'll hold.
[B] It is going to be a while before this is done in any kind of universal way
Well, while the government does have extreme difficulty, say, passing the Farm Act so that food stamps to the poor could continue to exist, because the republicans said the cuts didn't go far enough, and the democrats saying the cuts were going to far, leading to it dying immediately, not unlike both sides are hoping millions of poor people will, you can rest assured that when it comes to fucking you over a barrel with universal tracking, they got that shit covered.
My biggest problem is with these pushes to implement technology that simply isn't ready for prime time, like they did with NFC. (Broken before it was even widely available. The only useful feature I see for it now is passing VCards between cell phones. I have NFC and I've never even turned it on... and I may never do so.)
And I think, for anyone who regularly reads slashdot, and perhaps those set to attend DEFCON later where they'll discuss a remote wireless exploit that can, say, cause any car produced in the last five years to self-destruct with the driver inside of it, will find it totally unsurprising that technology not being ready for prime time is hardly an impediment to the rapid adoption of such technology. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go cloud my coffee maker, and then install my NSA-approved listening devices in all the rooms of my house, which they've cleverly labelled "Smoke Detectors".