When Will the Automotive Internet Arrive? 261
DeviceGuru writes "European researchers are developing a cooperative traffic system, known CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems), comprised of vehicle-, roadside-, and central infrastructure-based communications hardware and software, including vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) wireless. Among other capabilities, cars communicate with each other and with 'smart traffic signals' to smooth the flow of traffic and avoid accidents, or with 'smart traffic signs' to avoid dangerous driving conditions. The CVIS project is in the midst of undergoing field trials in Europe, and Audi has recently deployed 15 test vehicles in a similar project. The ambitious vision of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) includes goals such as reduced traffic congestion and fuel consumption, enhanced safety, and improved driver and passenger comfort. Ultimately, the developers envision a sort of Automotive Internet."
Vehicular anti-virus.... (Score:5, Funny)
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great time to invest in anti-virus
Let's invest in quality and secure software first, k?
IPV6 (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're smart, they'll build it out on IPV6.
(Those who consider this to be obvious should remember that the government is involved.)
Re:IPV6 (Score:4, Informative)
They use IPV6 and linux.
In CVIS, the standard network protocol for 2G/3G communication is IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6). In case no native IPv6 is available via 2G/3G, IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnelling can be accomplished via a CVIS-specific tunnel device driver and some sort of tunnelling software like OpenVPN.
The Operating System is the key foundation of the CVIS platform. The choice of operating system fundamentally affects portability, stability and extendibility of the whole CVIS system. Linux was chosen as it is freely available, has good quality, industry-standard development
tools and its license arrangements require access to source code.
Quotes from http://www.cvisproject.org/download/ERT_CVIS_FinalProject_Bro_06_WEB.pdf (page 10 and 11)
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Too bad they didn't go with FreeBSD.
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Too bad they didn't go with OpenBSD.
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That would have been good, too.
Re:IPV6 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:IPV6 (Score:5, Funny)
Vorsprung durch Technik (Score:2, Informative)
Better Proofreading (Score:2)
The CVIS project is in the midst of undergoing field trials in Europe, and Audio has recently deployed 15 test vehicles in a similar project.
I believe you mean Audi. From the article:
Audi has been conducting research into intelligently controlled traffic for several years in a project known as “travolution.” Among other objectives, the project aims to enable cars to communicate with traffic lights in order to provide smoother traffic flow and reduced CO2 emissions. The company last week released a statement describing the project and reporting on its progress.
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It's ok. I almost typed Audio before my quote. :p
I can see the new billboards (Score:3, Funny)
So much for the "Don't text and Drive" billboards, now we'll have don't "4Chan and Drive" or "/b/ and Driving = Death you friggin B'tards"
Sheldon
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So much for the "Don't text and Drive" billboards, now we'll have don't "4Chan and Drive" or "/b/ and Driving = Death you friggin B'tards"
Sheldon
Should we be warning them?!
there is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:there is a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
there is a small problem with the current aproach: until "every" car gets the system installed, it's nearly useless.
I don't think so. I mean, even if a single car had this, and then there were roadside sensors, that single car could benefit from the sensor network. Now replace roadside sensors with just a few percent of the cars having sensors, and benefits should be pretty clear.
And once something like half of the cars would have the system, the behaviour of the other half could be predicted quite nicely within certain limits. After all, a car driving between two cars will normally (ie. until it overtakes or turns) stay between those two cars and behave very predictably.
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Unfortunately though I see road-rage going up as people do not get to places as fast as they want.
Re:there is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
there is a small problem with the current aproach: until "every" car gets the system installed, it's nearly useless. The protocol need to "know" that every other vehicle is going to act accordingly its specification.
That's far from true. For one thing, even if every car were to have the system installed, that's no protection against bad actors.
If the developers have even half a brain they are designing the system to operate defensively rather than trustingly. That principle will limit what the system can achieve, but it also means that it will be resistant to deliberate attacks as well as accidents and non-participating vehicles. Considering that failures in the system will result in lives lost, I'd say that there is no other way to design it but defensively.
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Twenty years from now people are going to be sitting around going "How the fuck did people navigate this mess manually? Were they insane??"
Yes, yes we are. :p
Hopefully Never (Score:5, Insightful)
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I hope we have less computers in cars in the future, maybe even none if we really could. It'll be tough but it would save a lot of money and a lot of hassle.
Without computer control, combustion engines can't meet mileage and pollution standards.
Without computer control, electric/hybrid motors are vastly less efficient.
Unless we switch over to an entirely different engine technology, computers are here to stay.
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Some computers are not like others. It is not reasonable to compare engine management (which can fail without disaster) to systems which influence or control acceleration, steering and braking.
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I don't think a 5 year old Prius would be worse than a Hummer, but still it will be bad. Probably a lot worse than expected.
I don't know what the expectations are out there, but my 5-year old Prius gives me 52 mpg highway and even more in the city. I doubt a Hummer can beat that, unless you drop it from orbit :-)
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Have you done a lot of maintenance to your Prius?
There is nothing to maintain. Just replace the oil periodically, and tires as they wear out.
I'm sure an electric Hummer would beat your Prius in MPG eqv's (I've simulated it)
Any EV will beat any non-EV in MPG equivalent. However EVs that we have today are either underpowered, or have short range, or impossibly expensive, or all of the above. There is that Tesla Motors' EV that can beat most cars on the road today, it's just it costs $100K, and its Lith
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There is nothing to maintain. Just replace the oil periodically, and tires as they wear out.
We've pretty much debunked charliemopps11 post in terms of the prius-hummer comparison.
Your statements are exactly why you don't want an EV system, you want a plugin series hybrid system. Small ranges (50 miles) are good for high percentages of us to commute to work. What we need is a battery with enough energy density for such a vehicle that is cheap. We may already have it lead-acid, nicad, nife, etc. I want to study this problem in college.
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It doesn't give you more in the city - it may give you more compared to other cars
This only proves that you don't own a Prius; perhaps those who own one know better? Prius does have a better fuel efficiency in dense, slow traffic. You can easily see 100 mpg bars on the meter, and that is because the car is running only on electric power. I saw one such bar just yesterday; typically if the traffic is bad the efficiency is about 70-75 mpg. The purely electric drive is limited to speeds up to 42 mph.
The P
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Actually, it gives better in the city because over the same distance it encounters much less air resistance (and regenerative braking works great).
Air drag increases with the cube of speed: [wikipedia.org], so doubling the speed (from, say 30 mph to 60 mph) results in (1*2) cubed , or 8x the energy (double the speed, then cube it).
So you should get WAY better mileage in a Prius in the city.
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2 interesting observations. I just got back from vacation in Colorado driving a 10 year old 4 cyl manual Saturn L series. When driving on the interstate highway, I was driving between 75-80 MPH. I got around 30 MPG at that speed. When I was driving at high altitude(2400 to 3600 meters) with lots of climbing, I got 36 mpg on one tank, and 40 mpg on the other. The car had weak power though (non-turbo).
The other observation, was that with the lack of power, going up a steep climb, I got passed by a Prius. I am
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Yes, as your engine is running, its sucking in air. For every 14.7 units of air it sucks in, it will add 1 unit of fuel. At altitude, there is less dense air, so less air (by mass) is making it into the engine - meaning that less fuel is being added as well. Less power, but less fuel usage.
A prius's electric engine will not be degraded by altitude at all.
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Secondly, cars are already heavily computerized. There was the Toyota breaking problem which was fairly bad, but I haven't heard of any other issues. Cars are already very complex systems, they have 'bugs' of their own the breaking issue was a computer one but it could have just been normal mechanical failure, there is no data to
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I hope we have less computers in cars in the future, maybe even none if we really could. It'll be tough but it would save a lot of money and a lot of hassle.
That depends on what your vision of the future is.
In the US, single driver commuters spend an average of 4 hours per week getting to work and back, and only a small minority rate this as a pleasurable activity. Recovering those billions of lost man-hours per year is one of the biggest benefits of an automated highway system. Furthermore, the vast majori
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As soon as someone is killed or hurt by an automated car, there will never be automated cars again.
Yeah, because regular cars, airplanes, boats, skateboards, rollerskates, hang gliders, and jet skis are all retired forms of transportation.
I'm sorry to say this, and I'll try to be polite as possible, but that's an asinine belief that an entire technology line would be retired on one incident, or that even a rash of incidents would cause a permanent shelving. The best example would be nuclear power. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island both put *huge* amounts of fear in to people about nuclear power, and yet th
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If you live in a crowded hive the solution is mass transit, not streams of wasteful transport modules.
Replace select roads with trains, and force the issue. Suburban and interurban light rail work very well and have done so for more than a century.
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So in other words you are proposing an efficient public transport system.
If you had stopped right there you would have been insightful. Instead, the majority of your post nothing more than inciteful and irrelevant.
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Look at the dude who INTENTIONALLY rammed his SUV(what a surprise, an asshole in an SUV, perish the thought!) into the cyclists in San Fransisco.
Look at all the stupid cyclists blocking me, slowing me down, showing of how cool they are while getting 36 MPG equivalent. I've met a lot more assholes riding bikes, driving golf carts and hybrids than assholes driving SUV's. Most SUV driving folk care about other people but just aren't as concerned about the environment as you are. Some of them are concerned about the environment, but don't want to sacrifice their SUV for the environment. Many of them would buy a PHEV SUV or
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My uncle has a country place,
No one knows about.
He says it used to be a farm,
before the Motor Law.
Don't need to have every car! Brilliant (Score:3, Interesting)
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I've always thought it was the lange changes and sudden maneuvers that cause the most problems in traffic.
"Merging" seems to be the biggest problem in my area. ( yes its a form of lane changes, but in theory, 'controlled' )
Re:Don't need to have every car! Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
In a way, you are right. Idiots running side by side at the same speed causes people to figure out ways to get around them. Multiple-lane highways exist for a reason, and the *right* lane is the *slow lane* and the *left lane* is the fast lane. As near as I can tell doing as you suggest is a violation in all 50 states of the union.
BTW, truckers passing through Kentucky on I-75 (and probably elsewhere) were protesting the different speed limit for trucks and cars by lining up side by side at the border, and running exactly the speed limit all the way across. That resulted in absolute carnage as people tried to pass on the shoulder, and lined up for miles behind them. If your proposal were implemented, I would expect a huge increase in accidents as people got around the "blocker cars".
Traffic accidents are not caused by excessive speed to any great extent, they are caused by bad driving and discourteous driving - and your proposal is a classic example of both.
Brett
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Multiple-lane highways exist for a reason, and the *right* lane is the *slow lane* and the *left lane* is the fast lane.
Except in Texas and England.
Re:Don't need to have every car! Brilliant (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the right lane is the default lane and the left lane is for passing. If you aren't passing anyone or preparing for a left exit you shouldn't be in the left lane. It is a violation to do otherwise.
Cost effective? (Score:4, Insightful)
At some point, it might make more sense to reduce congestion by building enough roads with enough lanes for the cars.
Re:Cost effective? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cars don't scale. Mass transit scales better.
Re:Cost effective? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cost effective? (Score:4, Informative)
The link you provided shows that cars use more BTUs per passenger mile than anything but two light rail systems. Other mass transit systems (bus, jet, commuter train, etc.) all beat the automobile. Usually one provides links to buttress one's argument, or am I just too old-fashioned? (already know the answer...)
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It's the average car, like you said yourself. And look at the Tesla, the Tango and the ebikes, the hybrids. Advanced cars > transit.
Of course, you should apply the same technology level -- the technology used in U.S. transit is typically far worse than what's used in other advanced countries, and much more poorly run (especially in cities just dabbling cluelessly in transit, which tend to be the ones that choose "light rail") -- and the equation may flip again: "Advanced Transit > Advanced Cars"
But of course you can't just measure things with BTUs as if transportation was a computer game. For instance, one of the biggest problems
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Cars go where you're going when you're going there.
Mass transit goes places and runs on a schedule with only occasional regard to the particular needs of travelers.
Cars are paid for by the people who use them. Roads are paid for by the gas tax from the drivers of the cars.
Mass transit is subsidized by taking money from people against their will -- people who don't use mass transit and derive no substantial benefit from mass transit.
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City streets aren't a subsidy for drivers. Cities had streets long before cars were invented. Streets are part of what a city is. The residents of a city should pay for the streets. They use them and benefit from them whether they drive a car or not.
Mass transit tends to mostly benefit mass transit riders at the expense of non-riders. Mass transit riders don't even come close to paying for the operating cost (not including actually building anything) of mass transit.
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Ever think that maybe you also live in a society where your actions impact others? Do you think maybe you could fucking take a train if it means your neighbor gets to have a job? At what point do people like you make your own country to fuck up and leave the rest of us to actually care for one another?
Because everyone except me works for the train company? ???
Or is taking a train just a mindless ritual of obedience to some king or religion -- a sacrifice that leads to good harvests and good fortune for my village?
Just wondering.
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Don't bother arguing with Libertarians. Just tell them to go live in Somalia if they hate big government so much.
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What does mass transit have to do with "big government"? You seem to think there's a connection. Can you tell us what it is?
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Nope. Less than 5% of commuters use mass transit. The impact on congestion is minimal in most cities.
Building more roads is more cost effective in most places.
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That's true, but for smaller cities mass transit is terrible.
Having moved from a city of population 5 million to one of population 800 000 I have first hand experience of this. I went from 5 minute waits to 45 minute waits in -30C weather. Even bikes are a better choice than mass transit here.
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Another one for the "Mass Transit Sux" crowd. I live in a metropolitan area of about 2 million right now, and it takes almost 2 hours to go the 10 miles for my morning commute. (no joke, but I do it anyway) And this is one of the better systems I have had to use. Most of the places I have lived before either didn't have ANY mass transit at all (population 6k or less, so pointless anyway) or only sporadically, and only in very restricted areas of town (population 200k) Until I can truly work from home, with
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That's because it's a perpetuating cycle. The transit sucks, so no one uses it, so there's no incentive to improve it (nor funding), so it continues to suck so still no one uses it. With a larger population base, at the least you'll get enough people willing to put up with it that you can spare the cash to tweak the system.
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That's sorta funny considering that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm [wikipedia.org] is about that size with one of the best transit systems in the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Metro [wikipedia.org]
Mass transit DOESN'T scale. (Score:2)
I use Berlin U bahn, S bahn and RE trains just about every day... One of the best, most efficient and comprehensive mass transit systems in the world. But they only carry a fraction of the journeys (about 5%) which are made in the areas they service (Berlin/Brandenburg). They simply could not cope with a 20 fold increase in usage and there's no realistic way they could be made to cope.
Take a look at Germany's passengerkm stats per mode of transport to see just how the different modes compare.
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I use Berlin U bahn, S bahn and RE trains just about every day... One of the best, most efficient and comprehensive mass transit systems in the world. But they only carry a fraction of the journeys (about 5%) which are made in the areas they service (Berlin/Brandenburg). They simply could not cope with a 20 fold increase in usage and there's no realistic way they could be made to cope.
Take a look at Germany's passengerkm stats per mode of transport to see just how the different modes compare.
There are major population centers where rail transport accounts for a majority of travel (e.g., Tokyo), so clearly rail can scale, if done well, in appropriate circumstances.
Rail works fine for cases where it's suited (medium distances in areas with dense travel patterns), and allows greater density and efficiency, but there are clearly circumstances where it's not suited (rural mountain-top villages, sprawling American-style suburban wastelands).
But even for rail-friendly locations, transportation is
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Cars don't scale. Mass transit scales better.
Not in the eighth-largest city in the US. [dallasnews.com]
I would suspect other places as well are finding mass transit is not the panacea the environmentalists make it out to be.
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I would suspect other places as well are finding mass transit is not the panacea the environmentalists make it out to be.
Mass transit doesn't work because there are no "masses" to transport.
In the old USSR there were buses going to and from industrial areas. So when people go to work they take those buses, and the buses are full, and the fuel economy is achieved, and it's inexpensive. Once the shifts at factories start, the buses start going less frequently, until the next batch of passengers is expect
Re:Cost effective? (Score:4)
Mass transit is like delivering e-mail using the old bang path notation via UUCP [wikipedia.org].
There. I've used a bad Internet analogy to explain cars.
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At some point, it might make more sense to reduce congestion by building enough roads with enough lanes for the cars.
I think that they tried this in California. If you had ever tried to drive on their freeways you wouldn't be making brash statements like that.
I agree with dodobh's reply that mass transit scales better .. but with the caveat of "in dense(r) areas"
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I live in California now. California likes cars. The freeways here are great.
I lived in Portland for a while. Portland hates cars. Traffic congestion was much worse in Portland than it is here in California.
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At some point, it might make more sense to reduce congestion by building enough roads with enough lanes for the cars.
There's no such thing.
More roads with more lanes => more retail/housing construction => more traffic => congestion.
It was only relatively recently that anyone sat down and did a study which showed this reality.
The future of traffic management is definitely *not* more roads and more lanes.
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More roads with more lanes => more retail/housing construction ...
So more people will have better housing for less money? It sounds like they'll be able to lead better, happier lives that way.
And all it takes for this substantial improvement in living standards is to build more roads? Maybe we should get started doing that right away.
=> more traffic => congestion.
So we can build even more roads then. They improved living standards once. Why not continue to improve?
The future of traffic management is definitely *not* more roads and more lanes.
Because freedom and better living standards are no longer the goals of the people who deal with traffic management. In fact, they want
It isn't roads, or lanes. It's parking spaces (Score:3, Interesting)
No really it is.
Thought experiment. You have a road. You can safely put a car along the road every 2 seconds. What is the capacity of the road? 1800 cars per hour.
You put a parking garage at the end of the road. it takes 15 seconds to get a ticket and enter the garage. What is the capacity of the road now? 240 cars per hour. You just cut road capacity to 13% of nominal and created a huge traffic jam. Welcome to reality.
Our traffic problems are created because we don't get cars off the roads fast enough when
Re:Cost effective? (Score:4, Insightful)
There isn't enough room for more lanes everywhere.
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So only build them some places and not "everywhere" then? My post suggested we do the thing that is "cost effective". That should include more lanes when the objective financial numbers support more lanes.
Prior art (Score:2)
Smoothed and improved traffic flow can be observed whenever and wherever traffic signals cease operating. Assuming this new system has more downtime than the current traffic lights system, the new system will indeed improve traffic flow.
On the same day its first zero-day exploit does. (Score:2)
Technology (Score:2)
Why is technology the solution to congestion?
How about get all the cars off the road, replace with smaller vehicles, eliminate the need for so much road use and mandate that office hours be flexible and staggered.
Also, overpopulation (be it overall country levels or specific centralised areas) isn't helping. You can't keep building roads and then not expecting them to fill up.
iPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
Then it can give me all that data and I don't have to buy the expensive, soon obsolete hardware in the car.
Finally (Score:3, Funny)
When Will the Automotive Internet Arrive? (Score:2)
I hope never. I know *I* will fight it to the end. Computers do have their place, but sticking one in every nook and cranny 'just beacuse' is irresponsible.
Hopefully NEVER. (Score:5, Insightful)
For everything good that could come out of this, several somethings BAD will come out of it. Speed tracking for automatic tickets and insurance increases, and - NO TIN FOIL NEEDED - government tracking. The Brits will be the first to require this.
As soon as it's possible, the insurance companies will require this and jack your rates through the roof without it. As well, if your driving does not fit their statistical profile, your rates will goe up. As technology improves, if you take those right-turn-on-reds too fast, your rates will go up. Spend too much time in the "wrong" part of town? Your rates will go up.
The government will for sure figure out a way to leverage the information from this technology for some sort of tax increase.
There is no real benefit to having an Internet connected auto. Flying cars are a fantasy, road / highway technology has reached it's zenith.
Minority Report? (Score:2)
I'm amazed that I seem to be the first one to say anything about minority report...
Assuming us arrogant bastards in the USA don't want to give up our cars (likely) and you can convince us to simply give up DRIVING our cars (NOT likely, perceived lack of control is one of the main reasons cited by people nervous of flying) such a system really would be the ideal. We'd likely have to black out all the windows though, because people tend to get nervous seeing other cars cross traffic with mere inches to spare
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I'm amazed that I seem to be the first one to say anything about minority report...
Assuming us arrogant bastards in the USA don't want to give up our cars (likely) and you can convince us to simply give up DRIVING our cars (NOT likely, perceived lack of control is one of the main reasons cited by people nervous of flying) such a system really would be the ideal. We'd likely have to black out all the windows though, because people tend to get nervous seeing other cars cross traffic with mere inches to spare while traveling at high rates of speed.
Of course, for any of that to work, the vehicles must have very reliable and predictable behavior, which seems very unlikely if everybody's responsible for maintaining their own vehicles....
Problems? (Score:2)
Pfft (Score:2)
whatcouldpossiblygowrong (Score:4, Insightful)
If any article deserves that tag, you think it'd be this one.
I suppose they could just integrate it into a gps (Score:2)
But seriously... Big Brothermobile? (Score:4, Interesting)
I just do not see a practical way to keep the Big Brother aspects out of it, unless they were to build some kind of filter so that "the authorities" could not see personal information without a warrant or something. Heck, they could even set up a totally automated system to mail out speeding tickets. No police cars required.
I'll pass, thanks very much.
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Then you should also be worried about fighter aircraft which have been using fly by wire systems for quite some time now. As for using old cars, your sense of risk is skewed; you are concerned about the drive by wire systems more than the fact older cars tend to be built to older (read out-dated) safety standards. Even then, you are much more likely to be killed in a car accident of your own making than by a hardware failure; by at least an order of magnitude.
Re:I can't wait. (Score:4, Insightful)
I worked on fighters with electronic flight controls (F-16A/B/C/D) for years.
They are built far better than automobiles, which are and will remain consumer junk by comparison.
BTW, even the F-15 and F-16 engines have a stopcock mechanical throttle just in case of an auto-acceleration.
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And what would an F-16 be like if mass-produced for the $35,000 market? and of course, if each didn't come with its own team of crack mechanics. Call it what, about 1% of the quality control an average F-16 is accustomed to??
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Do they have fly by wire systems that are connected to the big dirty outside internet full of 733t h4x0rs? Thought not.
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So we are thinking somehow that "cooperative" will work with 2000lb vehicles traveling on highways at over 60MPH/100KPH? Somehow I have a feeling that this will work out about as well as SMTP is working for us now.
Cooperation works for 200,000 lb vehicles (known as airplanes) - see TCAS [wikipedia.org] for example.
Your complaints about unreliable cooperation involve people. People are unreliable. But machines can be as reliable as we build them to be. They certainly can be more reliable than people - machines don't ge