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

[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:Network collision - a whole new meaning :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Many problems could be avoided with a simple driver upgrade.