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:hmmm... (Score:1, Interesting)
1. Automated speeding tickets.
2. Insurance company logging of all your activity as an excuse to jack your rates up.
3. Data subpenaed in lawsuits.
4. NSA will be all over it. Reporters will be plowing into palm trees all over the place.
5. Highschool kids rip the devices out of cars in junkyards and drop them from freeway overpasses during a busy holiday for fun.
6. Law enforcement can remotely turn off your car... a few months later criminals will have the same ability...
It doesn't sound like a fair trade to me.
1. Then don't speed
2. Then adhere to road laws and be a safe driver
3. Follow the above and you wont have an issue
4. Way to tie this into current affairs
5. Only because you gave them the idea, and the NSA will surely track this back to you
6. This can already be done, see OnStar's cooperation with law enforcement to recover stolen vehicles, pretty sure I havent heard anything about criminals abusing this
NTSB... (Score:4, Interesting)
NO. As in, FUCK NO.
Re:"Hey, can I cut into your lane?" (Score:4, Interesting)
"We do not have a culture of safety surrounding the use of motor vehicles, and without it, things like this will only wind up having motorists smash the little boxes to pieces the moment they try to keep someone from "cutting them off" while their car tries a "I'm sorry, I can't let you do that, Dave."
Well, I definitely disagree with you there... but I do agree that it's nowhere near the kind that (necessarily) surrounds airplanes.
I don't particularly have a problem with this, except for 2 things:
[A] It had better not turn into a universal tracking system. Yes, I know that is a logical extension but the answer is NO. No GUIDs. No identity or location tracking. Realtime only. Anything else is fraught with too many real dangers to freedom.
[B] It is going to be a while before this is done in any kind of universal way. Because what will happen is exactly what happened with automobile "computers" in the first place: accidents will happen when vehicles try to prevent accidents, and the vehicles will be blamed. (And in some cases, probably correctly.) Then there will be a backlash and the idea will be tossed out for a few years. Then the technology will improve and it will slowly creep back in to common use.
I don't necessarily have a problem with that, as long as [A] is observed. 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 what about road users who aren't in cars? (Score:4, Interesting)
The NTSB also appears to not be considering that there are people on motorcycles, foot, and bicycle.
That's particularly poor, given that motor vehicle occupant safety has gone up, while pedestrian and cyclist safety has plunged. Why? Cars are increasingly safe for occupants, yet nothing is being done to stop drivers from plowing into other people.
All the safety has simply made people less careful. Why should they be careful? They're unlikely to be seriously injured, insurance will cover the damage and injuries, and they sure as hell aren't going to get charged with any crimes.
You can drive into a storefront and injure half a dozen people and not even get a ticket.
Kill a cyclist and the police will term it an "accident" - all you have to do is say the sun was in your eyes or you were changing the radio station. A little girl in Texas lost both her parents because a guy in a pickup truck slammed into her parents. His excuse: he'd looked down to change the station (and somehow drifted several feet onto the road shoulder.)