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EU Reserves a Frequency For Talking Cars

Posted by kdawson on from the long-as-they-don't-use-cell-phones dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "The European Commission has recently decided to reserve, across Europe, part of the radio spectrum for smart vehicle communications systems. The decision is part of the Commission's overall fight against road accidents and traffic jams, and the hope is that vehicles' developers will create wireless communication technology that will allow cars to 'talk' to other cars and to the road infrastructure providers."

2 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Still waiting for robot cars by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's just so much time wasted on the road.
    Link all the cars and let a computer control them and the moment the light goes green all the cars could accelerate at once rather than the first car moving off, then the second, then the third etc. On top of that throw in smarter traffic lights, better public transport systems(since there would be no need for drivers the money could be spent on more busses/trains) and being able to sleep on your way into work and you have a big winner

  2. Re:Still waiting for robot cars by Narphorium · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real problem, as I see it, would be how you transition from a system of millions of non-robot cars to a system where all the cars drive themselves.

    I've always imagined that there should be something analogous to the carpool lane except that it would be for robot cars. A driver would be able to manually pull up beside the "robot lane" and request to join it. Then the other cars would automatically open up a spot and he would be automatically merged into the robot lane.

    Once you have a convoy of vehicles that can automatically drive within a safe stopping distance of each other you can ramp up the speed of the robot lane so that everyone gets to work much faster and they can even read the paper on the way there.