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Researchers Apply P2P Principles To Car Traffic

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the traffic-eagle-eye dept.

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."

12 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Affects highways, but that's it by EggyToast · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    1. Re:Affects highways, but that's it by stewbacca · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Affects highways, but that's it by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Informative

      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).

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    3. Re:Affects highways, but that's it by EggyToast · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.

    4. Re:Affects highways, but that's it by snowraver1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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...

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      Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
  2. Network collision - a whole new meaning :) by Cyberax · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    1. Re:Network collision - a whole new meaning :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Many problems could be avoided with a simple driver upgrade.

  3. How many times does this need to be said??!! by djupedal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Put the damn money into comprehensive public transportation!!

    1. Re:How many times does this need to be said??!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:How many times does this need to be said??!! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      My blog
  4. zero-infrastructure ftw by j1mmy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. Just what I want to risk... by sabt-pestnu · · Score: 4, Funny

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