Researchers Apply P2P Principles To Car Traffic

alphadogg writes to tell us that lessons learned from peer-to-peer networks are being applied to traffic systems in order to prevent jams. "Their Autonet plan would center around ad hoc networks of vehicles and roadside monitoring posts supported by 802.11 technology (the prototype uses 11b). The vehicles would essentially be the 'clients' in such a system and feature graphical user interfaces to pass along information to drivers. They're building the system to be able to handle data on thousands of traffic incidents and road conditions."

Comments

Re:Affects highways, but that's it

[stewbacca]

Most of the trouble I've seen, and most of the frustration I encounter, is from badly-timed traffic lights.

The most I've seen is from the overwhelming number of dumbasses on the road. A traffic light engineer is totally limited by the absolute inability of the moron up front to step on the pedal on the right when the light turns green, then the guy after him, then the guy after him. Get off your damned phone and GO already.

Re:Affects highways, but that's it

[mrchaotica]

As a civil engineering student, I took a course that (among other things) taught me how to design traffic signal timing. I learned two surprising things:

1. how hard it is to time the lights to give all traffic movements an acceptable level of service (especially if you can't add new lanes), and
2. how poorly designed some of the intersections around here are.

I think the root problem is that good transportation engineers are few and far in between (probably because a lot of people who went into transportation did so because structural engineering was too hard).

Re:p2p = phenylpropanolamine

[morgan_greywolf]

Not really. Phenylpropanolamine causes hemorrhagic stroke -- aka bleeding in the brain. That's why it's "hard to come by these days."