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

Affects highways, but that's it

[EggyToast]

Most of the trouble I've seen, and most of the frustration I encounter, is from badly-timed traffic lights. And many delays are the result of civil service rather than accidents. For example, intersections that have very long red-lights lead to more people trying to speed through the light, causing accidents in the first place.

This technology may help people avoid problems once they occur, but it won't do squat to affect the root of many problems -- bad traffic planning. Without a good traffic plan, everything made to "fix" it is just a patch on top of a bad base.

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:Affects highways, but that's it

[EggyToast]

Agreed. I was in San Francisco over the summer, and noticed that the majority of the lights were very short. I was there as a pedestrian, not a driver, but it seemed that all of the drivers were cool with the short lights. After being there a few days, it made sense -- if you miss a light, it's not a big deal because it'll be green again in about 15 seconds.

As a side effect, all of the pedestrians went to the corners to cross, because it was easier to wait a short time to get a light compared to waiting to jaywalk (since jaywalking only works if there's a gap in traffic).

Then, when I came home, the fact that we have many, many traffic lights that last well over a minute just irritated me to no end. Now I see tons of intersections where traffic is waiting for a green, yet there's no cross traffic because the lights are too long and the entire system cascades.

Re:Affects highways, but that's it

[EggyToast]

Morons are a problem, of course, but even they can be alleviated with better light planning. If the lights are short, people aren't going to figure "well, I've got 2 minutes to kill, might as well pull out the phone." They know the lights going to change and they won't be able to pull it out of their pocket in time.

In my city, we've got a couple streets where you can hit all greens, saving yourself about 5 minutes for the entire stretch, if you speed about 7-9 mph. You get half yellows and the rest are green. So anyone who tries it thinks "shit, this really is the best way to drive down this stretch," which just leads to a different kind of moron. Yet, if the lights were set up the *other* direction, traffic could be regulated so that there was no advantage to going over the speed limit -- you'd simply be approaching a red light anyway, and someone going exactly 25 or 35 would hit the light right after it changes. The only people slowed would be speeders.

There's a lot that cities can do to alleviate traffic problems, but it's not "popular" or particularly showy, so almost none of them do. Fiddling with traffic lights doesn't win elections.

Re:Affects highways, but that's it

[IAmGarethAdams]

If everyone were using the same algorithm, it would likely compensate by sending you left with e.g. 70% chance and right with 30% chance, depending on the relative capacities of those routes. Of course there wouldn't be any guarantee that the drivers would listen to the recommendation but if too many people clogged up one route that information would soon filter back into the system.

Re:Affects highways, but that's it

[snowraver1]

Just floor it a lil bit

Funny you say that. There was an earlier comment earlier that also said a similar thing. I live in Calgary, AB, and downtown along 4th ave the lights are all synched for about 10 blocks or so, but only if you speed. The limit is 50, but you have to go about 60 or you start hitting yellows.

Why is this? Can there really be that many Traffic Controllers that screwed up on the calculation? Is it so that police can sit on a corner at night and catch speeders? I don't get it...

Re:Affects highways, but that's it

[YrWrstNtmr]

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,

And people have learned to not go immediately when the light turns green, because some asshat is still running the red light on the cross street.

Network collision - a whole new meaning :)

[Cyberax]

Words "network collision" are going to take a whole new meaning :)

Re:Network collision - a whole new meaning :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Many problems could be avoided with a simple driver upgrade.

Re:Network collision - a whole new meaning :)

[ZygnuX]

That's one of the worst karma whoring i've ever seen! xD

How many times does this need to be said??!!

[djupedal]

Put the damn money into comprehensive public transportation!!

Re:How many times does this need to be said??!!

[Anonymous Coward]

As many times as it takes to figure out slashdot is the wrong place to say it. You need to bug the people in charge of the money.

Re:How many times does this need to be said??!!

[morgan_greywolf]

Put the damn money into comprehensive public transportation!!

But the auto companies -- you know, the ones who just asked for a big bailout and got some of it -- spent millions and millions of dollars convincing you, the unwitting public, that public transportation is a bad -- a waste of government resources!

And now you know why there's no good public transportation in most big U.S. cities, save a few.

Full disclosure: I have -- in the past -- worked for two of the Detroit Three automakers.

Re:How many times does this need to be said??!!

[religious freak]

Uh, this will likely lead to as comprehensive public transportation as you can get. There have been a number of writeups about this, not the least of which was mentioned on /. in this article.

This routing information being handed to drivers who manually take action is the first step into complete and total automation. With automation, transportation costs will plummet and it's not entirely impossible to envision adequate transportation being listed as a "human right" along side adequate shelter and food (meaning not everyone will have it, but society will go to great lengths to provide it). This is a fantastic development, and I'm very hopeful about the future of automated driving - this takes us one step closer. And anyone who is skeptical should read the writeup Brad Templeton has done on his website, this is not just a sci-fi thing. This will bring real societal progress and is entirely obtainable.

Patience padawan.

Re:How many times does this need to be said??!!

[mollymoo]

As many times as it takes to figure out slashdot is the wrong place to say it. You need to bug the people in charge of the money.

The people in charge of the money are elected officials, who are elected by (among others) the people on Slashdot. One person bugging the people in charge of the money won't do much good, you need lots of people to do the bugging for anything to happen. The way you get lots of people is by raising awareness of the issue with the public by doing things like posting on Slashdot and talking to your friends (who talk to their friends...). Discussing issues is public is how you get public support, which is how you get the people in charge of the money to do what you want.

zero-infrastructure ftw

[j1mmy]

research on this sort of thing has been going on for almost two decades now. the increasing ubiquity of in-car nav systems, cellphones with gps, and other positioning and communications technologies helps to overcome the biggest hurdle: critical mass. this sort of system isn't useful if only a handful of cars have it.

the other, and more difficult, part of this work is using this data in a way that can provide predictive travel information to drivers before that data becomes outdated. it's one thing to know about congestion on a road 10 minutes from your current location. it's better to know whether it's still going to be congested when you get there. models to do this sort of thing exist, but aren't (yet) fast or reliable enough to be used in real time.

in urban areas, there's been an increasing push for taxis to be outfitted with gps transponders both as a political move, but also as a research tool and eventual mechanism for supporting real-time traffic data collection. taxis in major cities cover all the big and little streets, all over the place, all the time. they're perfect for fitting into a regional live traffic data collection system.

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."

Re:p2p = phenylpropanolamine

[larry bagina]

Maybe it's just me, but my trust in meth instructions is inversely related to the number of spelling errors.

Just what I want to risk...

[sabt-pestnu]

Getting sued by the Motor Vehicle Association of America for using P2P traffic control software and downloading copyrighted road blocks!

Bring the roundabouts to the US

[hwyhobo]

A lot of the unnecessary traffic delays at poorly regulated traffic lights could be completely circumvented by getting rid of lights and settings up roundabouts. Even through traffic slows down, it does not stop, and it automatically regulates itself.

Roundabout takes very little time to get used to, and it presents a consistent interface to drivers. First time I saw them in Italy many years ago during a business trip, I instantly fell in love with them. Since then I've seen them all over Europe. I think most drivers in my area (Silicon Valley) would love them, too, as everyone seems to be rather impatient (which is quite understandable with the unending traffic jams and poor timing of traffic lights contributing to the jams).

Re:Is this new?

[glueball]

They have spoken to physicists, but perhaps not listened. I can tell you car traffic, network traffic, and Nash equilibrium are all related here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess_paradox