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Ford Building Cars That Talk To Other Cars
thecarchik writes "Ford's new system works over a dedicated short-range WiFi system on a secure channel allocated by the FCC. The company says the system one-ups radar safety systems by allowing full 360-degree coverage even when there's no direct line of sight. Scenarios where this could benefit safety or traffic? Predicting collision courses with unseen vehicles, seeing sudden stops before they're visible, and spotting traffic pattern changes on a busy highway. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported in October that vehicle-to-vehicle warning systems could address nearly 80 percent of reported crashes not involving drunk drivers. As such, it could potentially save tens of thousands of lives per year."
In the sense of network architecture, the only way I would be even semi-okay with this would be if it really was completely decentralized and peer-to-peer. These types of systems which preach safety and security worry me, as they also could lead to large-scale privacy concerns decades down the road, since you know the various Traffic Management Authorities would jump head over heals for the ability to see real-time position of all cars on the expressway. Then a few years down the road, somebody commit's a crime in or with a car with one of these systems, a politician jumps on the new piece thinking it would make a great "brand item" for his campaign, and given a little bit of misguided legislation, BOOM. The main problem with centralizing management and data.
Though, I _am_ taking this a little far, I hope some of the things from Minority Report never come to be.
By the way, off-topic, but is the "There was an unknown error in the submission" just there for old-times sake, or did that whole thing get ignored again?
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
...about how many lives will be saved, is that they don't take into account that once in place, people rely on them, and change their behavior accordingly. So if I feel like my car is going to alert me if I am likely to hit something, I don't feel so obliged to pay close attention to my driving -- effectively canceling out much of their effect.
Can't wait until I can send a message to the driver in front of me and GTFO the way
cant wait until this shit is hacked, then that guy riding my bumper will get whats coming to him.
he who controls the spice controls the universe
Now, if I can get a cheap HUD with this (which I don't think exists yet) I can have a wireframe image of the unseen car appear on screen, in its exact location in real life. Just like those see-through-walls hacks in first person shooters.
... mod other divers down?
Have gnu, will travel.
as they also could lead to large-scale privacy concerns decades down the road, since you know the various Traffic Management Authorities would jump head over heals for the ability to see real-time position of all cars on the expressway.
Nothing says that a system like this would have to inform other cars of who you are, just that you are there. And as far as that goes, if you aren't broadcasting some sort of unique id to traffic control systems, they would only know you are say, a car traveling north at 20mph. How is this a problem?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Hackers delight! Now I can either shutdown an entire freeway, or cause other mayhem! WHOPPIEEE! I love stupid.
There are so many other safety things that make more sense before this.
Self steering gear in the steering column.
Electronic brake.
Vision systems.
Speed Limit systems.
IMHO, this Ford trial is just a way for Intel to sell chips. Like the SABRE trial, they conveniently don't mention trucks. Why? Because Intel can sell more chips in cars than trucks. I think the tech is called WAVE or something like that.
Jim Pruett, Founder
http://www.wikiSPEEDia.org
My crappy wifi can barley cross a 10 foot room without blinking out and I went through 3 hubs before I found one that didnt suck (a refurb netgear out of all things), the one at work can barley make it 50 feet of open air before dropping off to doing the 0-5% dance
And people want to trust their lives to it while hauling ass down the interstate inside of a metal box?
It will be completely impossible for either hacked Ford computers, or any other Wifi device operated by somebody who knows hat "MAC spoofing" means, to present inaccurate, deceptive, or otherwise unhelpful information to these Ford vehicles. I, for one, take comfort in that.
FFS, dudes, trusting the client in a life-critical application? Srsly? Srsly?
Just imagine if someone made a virus where all they had to do is drive by your car and connect via wifi which could kill your engine at highway speeds! I cant wait for Glen Beck to explain how it works to me.
In fact, I've already come up with the movie idea! A basement dwelling malicious hacker team... I'm thinking Mila Khunis and Shia LaBeouf, use this virus to rob armored cars! You can post in this thread with offers, I'll start the bidding at $500,000.
Are italics working yet?
Nope!
So your car knows that Car B is hidden behind Car C. How does the driver get informed? Is there some sort of head's up display or audio clue? All the pictures show is a line of LEDs. Besides, it's quite often the non-car items (pedestrians, debris, icy patches, etc) that are the problem. How does this system inform you that there is a deer on the road behind all that fog?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Just like AIS, except in cars?
Except for the fact that the much-shortened reaction time in operating a car versus a ship makes that almost useless, that's a great idea!
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I don't know why, but when I read this I couldn't help but think of a group of Furbies chattering amongst themselves...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
From TFA summary: "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported in October that vehicle-to-vehicle warning systems could address nearly 80 percent of reported crashes not involving drunk drivers."
Why does the NHTSA go out of their way to exclude drunk drivers? They won't benefit at all from this system? Really?
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Exploit 'em.
Crack 'em, hack 'em, exploit 'em...
Wipe 'em off, and do it again....
This will be a blackhat's paradise.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This sounds similar to the ADSB system developed for aircraft.
Now imagine doing it at 70mph with your wife screaming "OMG WE'RE GONNA DIE!"
I wonder if you could manipulate the data to make it seem like your car didn't exist?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
the author (Nelson Ireson) is clueless. This isn't "Wi-Fi," which is a trademarked term referring to 802.11 technologies. Wi-Fi isn't "dedicated," and doesn't run on "a secure channel."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I don't want my car bitching to other cars about my driving over the petrol pump.
how do the cars now where they are? and what height they are at?
I don't think GPS can tell that you are in lane 1 and a other car is in lane 2. Also in some areas a car can on a ramp on top of you going the same way or under you.
What about areas where there is a poor gps signal?
How many cars can the wifi system handle be for it gets over loaded?
breaks.sys has caused a system error!
Turn key to off and then back on to restart!
"...address nearly 80 percent of reported crashes not involving drunk drivers..." Drunk drivers are the real problem. Solve that and I'll be impressed.
There's few things more irritating to me than waiting for a red light when there are no other vehicles at an intersection.
All I want is a simple way to communicate to the traffic light to let it know that I am approaching so I don't have to stop. It seems that most automatic lights I have encountered wait until I have come to a near full stop - which partially defeats the purpose.
Implement this and then BAM - instant time savings and 3+ Miles per gallon savings for every vehicle on the road.
More importantly to me, is whether or not these are implemented using open standards.
Car-to-Car communication isn't helpful when 10% of them use FORD wireless communications, 10% have GM brand Safety wireless etc. etc.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
This sounds like a great idea to me. Although, I'm still confused as to why cars don't already come with some kind of radar/sonar device that would tell you when another vehicle or object is sitting in your blind spot while belting down the freeway. I often see cars in front of me swerving to avoid an accident just becuse some driver had decided to merge without looking, or change lanes, also without looking. I guess we're a step closer with reversing sensors and such. Maybe when they get this sorted out they can start working on my flying car that I was promised as a child.
..some way to represent my vehicle as being about 10 feet behind and in front of where it actually is. cut me off, ride my ass, and maybe your car will complain.
-Lod
i dont mind all the new tech in cars. heck even with auto drive become a realty im cool with it. as long as i can always take over quickly and effectifly if something goes wrong. like taping the brake with cruse control.
And I would reply with "I cannot see around the truck and past the shrub, so I will not block the crosswalk out of consideration for the bicyclist you cannot see, that's why I am not turning right on red" and "I am going just under the speed limit, you do know that speed is illegal, do you not, please see under 'less than or equal to' -- Thanks"
What if the car is feeling a little suicidal? How safe is it then?
I'm a wanker.... and loving it!
Step 1: Hack a transmitter to show the highway completely blocked ahead.
Step 2: Wait for cars to stop
Step 3: Rob the now stopped cars.
Step 3a: Profit!
The RF band is around 5.4GHz, allocated specifically for short-range transportation communication.
I just finished reading One Jump Ahead by Mark L. Van Name (Baen Publishing).The story is set in the future where all machines and appliances have AI and are connected to the "Net". So you have to be nice to your washer so it doesn't gossip about you, etc. I trust (as I adjust my tin foil car bra) that the system would be used only for good purposes, but I can't help think that we are hurrying to reach the cool/scary future that is often depicted in sci-fi literature.
Car makers have time and time again shown themselves incapable of writing secure code.
Unless the FCC & NHTSA exert FAA levels of scrutiny over Ford's V2V software,
I can only see this ending poorly.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
In the sense of network architecture, the only way I would be even semi-okay with this would be if it really was completely decentralized and peer-to-peer.
The associated research area -- pretty old by now -- is called VANETs.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
In other words.. those drivers who, despite not being physically impaired, nevertheless engaged in activities such as, but not limited to: tailgaiting, failing to yield right-of-way, driving too slow with reference to the speed limit and conditions, and/or performing a "rolling roadblock" by both refusing to pass the traffic to your right AND refusing to merge into the right (slow) lane so faster drivers can get past you. Those are the four most dangeous behaviors in which any driver can possibly engage. The first two directly endanger others; the last two tempt other drivers to perform dangerous maneuvers to get around a driver who has voluntarily decided to become a bottleneck. You make something tempting enough, and right or wrong, legally or illegally, drivers WILL eventually try it.
... yet they wait until the last possible moment to actually get into the left lane, despite multiple opportunities. So they cut rudely in front of other drivers, or otherwise perform a poorly planned, poorly executed maneuver. All because they couldn't plan ahead a little.
... I wonder what good these ever-sophisticated machines really are, when most of society in general and its constitutents in particular seem to accept lower standards as a sign of progress.
I suppose a distant fifth would be those drivers who just refuse to plan ahead even a little bit. For example... those drivers who know their left turn is coming up within the next 1-2 miles
If a logic-based, computer-calculated system can prevent accidents, it's only because so many accidents are 100% preventable, foreseeable, thoughtless, stupid. negligent failures to account for the knowable circumstances.
In the long run
Absolutely. Intellidrive is the name for this in the US (previously VII, Vehicle Infrastructure Initiative). The plan is to specify an open protocol, some base DOT-specific applications, and then leave the field open for others to come up with creative uses for it.
And yes, the car manufacturers are on board with this. They've agreed to implement the minimum system necessary in new model cars, and anything above the minimum system is going to be how they differentiate themselves between products.
(The system is more than just car-to-car, it's car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure)
There is a section of highway east of my town that is both a highway going north and south and a highway going east and west. It is about 8 miles long and it is 5 lanes(2 lanes going each direction and a center lane for left turns). Since it is a well traveled highway there are a lot of commercial stores on each side. The traffic lights are not just for the cross traffic at their intersection as they are for all the stores in between the lights. If there is no break in traffic for customers to get in and out of the highway than people will not shop there.
you know the various Traffic Management Authorities would jump head over heals for the ability to see real-time position of all cars on the expressway.
They will be getting that ability anyway.
Satellite technologies, navigation and video. Pilotless aircraft. RFID or something of that sort. There are many, many, ways of doing this. The railroads were working on the problem over a century ago.
Are we sure the Sontarans arent behind this?
There's few things more irritating to me than waiting for a red light when there are no other vehicles at an intersection. All I want is a simple way to communicate to the traffic light to let it know that I am approaching so I don't have to stop. It seems that most automatic lights I have encountered wait until I have come to a near full stop - which partially defeats the purpose.
Implement this and then BAM - instant time savings and 3+ Miles per gallon savings for every vehicle on the road.
The solution already been invented, and doesn't even require high-tech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout
Which is why it is absolutely necessary that the government immediately adopt OUR company's standard and pass a law requiring every car manufacturer to implement it. And, of course, license it. For a modest fee. Payable to us, of course.
After all, what's good for US is good for the country.
TCAS for cars? Cooooool. Next up: cars that time themselves to miss each other at lights so nobody has to stop!
Naaaa, if anything it will be used to insure that stopped cars go and going cars stop. The system isn't out to help you -except out of your money.
Most of Southern NH has this - along with the sensors at the edge of each road where it meets the intersection, there is usually another a couple hundred meters back, so the intersection knows you are a few seconds from arriving. If you're coming from the non-dominant road at night, and there is no other traffic, it will turn your light green before you reach the intersection (you do end up slowing down a little, but its better than nothing...)
Now I can drive like an idiot and everyone else's car will avoid me! The road is mine!
I preach safety and security at my church....
...welcome our Knight Industries Talking Car Overlords.
Next up, SONY auto...
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
A car travelling down a multilane highway at the speed limit is going to try to maintain an adhoc network with all cars in range,
including oncoming ones?
Say 2 lanes each way, 40m car spacing, radio range 400m, approach speed 50m/s.
Static (cars moving with you) : 20 cars (10 ahead, 10 behind in each 2 lanes)
Oncoming cars - another 20, each only in range for 16sec (8sec before they come level with you),
and at a rate of more than 2 new cars every second
So an adhoc network of 40 cars (or a member of 40 different adhoc networks), processing more than 2 new cars and 2 deletions every second
That sounds a wee bit better than any control/radio network someone can afford to put in a car.
Lovely! more like car to cop system. Instant ticket if you drive 1 mph over.
It's called "rest on red" and it's being implemented in some smarter municipalities.
When there's no traffic, the light point red in all directions. As soon as a sensor detects a car approaching, that direction gets a green light immediately. The hitch is - most sensors are placed near the intersection for traditional control systems. That means you have to slow down quite a bit before reaching the sensed areas. But even that is a heck of a lot better than having the light just cycling red-green mindlessly.
Personally, I like the added sense of security I feel while drafting a semi at 85, (knowing I'm getting that extra 10 MPG) and Ford's radar brake interlocked cruise control is keeping me at a steady 22 feet off the back end of a load of X-Boxes on their way to Laredo, While I dare to text...To hell with all the wireless self-drive tech, just lock my ass onto a cross-country semi, and I'll swing like Tarzan from vine to vine. I just need something bigger to push the air. (see silent movie w/Ben Turpin using magnets in engineless car for same purpose)
...like to have a word with you. They have spoken with each other, and have come to the collective decision that you really need to have your eyes checked ASAP. Oh, and your car would like an oil change, while you're at it.
If this Modern Security Analysis of an Automobile is anything to go by, the auto industry could really be in for many catastrophic security attacks on internal car networks if they start giving cars wireless capabilities. In the study, students were able to easily hack into a modern auto Electronic Control Unit and take almost complete control of the car. This included all sorts of fantastically fun things like completely shutting off the car mid-drive, turning all lights on and off, control the accelerator, control the dashboard, etc. (look at the pictures).
Giving hackers easy wireless access to nearly electrical function in our cars == really bad idea.
and how is that bad?
you want to be able to get away with a hit and run? or drive home after committing a crime without anyone knowing?
you are placing the freedom to commit crime and have a fair chance of getting away with it, ahead of public safety.
BTW if you carry a mobile phone ....
Anyone else think this is a horrible idea? People already think they are invincible enough to talk on the phone, head bang, watch movies, and bump extremely loud & obscene music. Do you really think it would be wise to tell them they don't need to pay attention anymore because the cars will do it for them?
Traffic Management Authorities would jump head over heals for the ability to see real-time position of all cars on the expressway.
They're pretty close already: http://www.southflorida511.com/Cameras.aspx has pretty extreme coverage of highways in South Florida, and it could easily be upgraded to real-time tracking of cars with higher-definition, faster, and more low-light capable cameras. There's already enough camera coverage to do Open Road Tolling, by license plate tracking or an in-car transponder in the same lane.
Relying on each car to transmit their own position correctly isn't something that will work at highway scales; only now is it proving workable for commercial aircraft (see ADS-B).
With vision recognition and traffic monitoring they already have that ability (and adding RFID to license plates would be easy). Private enterprise, however, doesn't have it yet. I expect targeted advertising (billboards and radio stations: and remember the wifi module in your car knows what you're listening to). The commercial potential must be huge.
I get annoyed when people spout off about how bad this kind of thing is. The thing hasn't hit the road and I'm sure the last thing Ford or anyone else wants is for people to stop relying on their actual driving skill. Nothing's ever good enough for half the uber-idiot-nerds on these message board, number one, and number two, you guys very often seem to forget all the R&D that goes into things like this. Eventually you have to have 1.0. I mean, shit, at least companies like Ford have the decency to wait until 1.0 -- unlike half the hair brained and half-baked technologies you guys LOVE the shit out of.
Don't get me wrong, I was all in for Mandrake 8.1 too.
What I'm saying is that needless negativity like that displayed by some of the people who scored a fucking 5 (seriously, mod?) on this thread is exactly what's destroying the country as a whole and limiting progress worldwide. "No, no, no, no." And who cares if you can't get behind it, dickwad? Don't buy one! The shit won't be ubiquitous until it's as reliable as air bags or anti-lock brakes (both of which, I might add, heard similar arguments when they first came into the latter developmental stages).
So eat shit.
The big question is: is it compatible? Ford got really cosy with microsoft a while ago. Now Ford is coming out with this new technology. 1. At some point, does your car just freeze on the turnpike, and what you have to do is close all open windows, get out of the car, then get back in the car and re-open all the windows, and 2.will this new technology only talk to other Ford cars, and will it not talk to Ford cars with the technology, but at an earlier version, and will the cars require an 'upgrade' to the latest version for the cars to be able to communicate? Considering the history of their big partner, all of my questions are entirely reasonable.
siemens and honeywell are working on this. they have a new system which uses cameras to detect cars instead of the old inductance loop. i guess that it works well, but costs alot more than the standard system, so only high priority intersections are having them installed...
There are an excellent series of essays which I found through /.. They were written by Brad Templeton (EFF chairman). In the essays he outlines a lot of the objections to "robocars" (as he terms it) and many of the possible solutions. Centralized management of data need not be in place for such a system to work. His "school of fish" idea I found pretty interesting...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
This is a required, and worthy, step on the road to driver-less (or driver-assisted, perhaps) auto navigation for heavy traffic and interstates. As demo'd on mythbusters, fuel economy goes way up (70% saving) if the cars can drive close enough to each other. As this tech evolves, intercommunication will allow for close car travel and hands-free interstate cruising. With distance sensors, infra-red far distance detectors, traffic line sensors, traffic sign readers, gps and mapping, it's almost there already. Bring it on.
Where are these high speed roundabouts? The gas wasted at traffic lights is mainly from acceleration, so to save that, you need to be able to go through a roundabout without slowing down.
What is meant by short-range here? WiGig typically talks about 10 meters, and I would see that as an absolute minimum distance between two cars. In fact, only in urban situations where you are sitting at an intersection, traffic signal or on highways in trafficjams does this apply. Do remember that even bumper-to-bumper you will have 4-5 meters average between two aerials, except when you use one at either end of the car.
For applications that Ford is talking about, you are even at the limits of normal WiFi (operating up to 100 meters). Of course there may be cars between you and a hazard point, but if there are none, 100 meters is short even for a computer to act. Doing 120 km/h give a braking distance of 70 meters, which gives 1 second to react. Of course a computer can react in a fraction of that time, but it also has to determine whether or not braking is required.
It all has been done before in the Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastucture System projects, see http://www.cvisproject.org
Perhaps Ford could join the other manufacturers?
*BEEP * I'm Not Here
*BEEP * I'm Not Here
*BEEP * I'm Not Here
#CRUNCH# DIDNT YOU SEE ME ?
*BEEP * Call lawyer to sue.
... begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th.
Which means it has the potential to be patched and hardened quickly over just a few years.
This is done to prevent you from driving up to the intersection at the posted limit without braking because you assume that the light will go green in time. If it's just you at the intersection that's not a problem, but when two people approach the intersection using the same assumption, mayhem ensues.
Centralization is not the greatest of my worries. What worries me is that this technology undoubtedly has to talk to the CAN-bus to do its job, and we've all seen how easily the CAN-bus can be made to do someone else's bidding. Like disabling brakes or applying right-side brakes. At 150km/h on the freeway. Good thing the cars talk to each other and share the virus, right?
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Skynet will take over the world by first taking over the cars!
...and consider the opportunities. If, by some unprecedented fluke, the automanufacturers agree on an open standard for V2V communication and radar becomes standard in cars. What then? Augmented reality where cars are bracketed on your windscreen? The option to toss a "thank you" at someone who let you into their lane? Your driverslicence keep a record of these messages from fellow drivers, where your drivingexperience and behaviour is indicated in their windshield brackets? I smell an interesting new future where intercar communication goes beyond flashing headlights and honking horns.
It's an expensive, non-critical technology with potential for massive abuse inherent in its deployment. Trusted Computing wass aimed squarely at DRM use, which most clients did not need with an excuse of authentication and encryption, which it did support but not as well. This technology is aimed not at safety but at _tracking_, which is iinherent to its construction. That's potentially useful for paying tolls, but provides an extremely difficult to detect avenue for abuse by law enforcement or anyone who can arrange access to what is likely to be a very poorly secured back-end infrastructure for mobile or stationary wireless nodes.
Open Standards? Doubtful. I'm sure the real engineers will design a great system - which will then be nibbled to death by green-eyeshade wearing ducks, haggling over pennies. Low bid wins again, with chips sub-sub-supplied from who knows where, with who knows what kind of buggy hard code - accidental or otherwise. Plus the unintended consequence of 'making thigs easier for increasingly bad drivers (occupants?) in a mixed-mode system...
Don't Fords run Microsoft code? I'm pretty sure they do, and that's why I won't even sit in one with the engine running.
You can do it now with well-placed pavement sensors. Your city is just lame.
Since we are ranting:
Maybe Ford can be vehicles that work. Ford is legendary for its unreliability. I have owned 2 Ford vehicles.
1. The Ford Fairmont. I pushed that fucker all over the state looking someone to rebuild the Ford Windsor engine. This piece of garbage had a nasty and well deserved reputation of dying at 40000 miles and needing a complete rebuild.
2. The Ford Ranger. The transmission in that bastard died at 60000 miles while I was 10 miles between podunk and nowhere. The transmission was rebuilt and then the truck sold. Ford was supposed to produce good trucks. Another lie.
If Ford could produce a car that actually worked, like say Hyundai (100000 mile warranty), Honda (just works), and Toyota (also just works, unintended acceleration being more about the tools who bitch to a government that wanted to do Toyota in the eye) then it would do that. Otherwise, perhaps Ford should stop "innovating" (read wasting money) and start building vehicles that can last more than 5 years without visits to the auto mechanics 6 times a year.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I had this Idea about 10 years ago, no one would listen to me then. Of course one draw back, is what information would it send to the cop hiding behind the highway sign up the road and to the right?
...more precisely General Aviation and on an even narrower scale gliding (as in flying sailplanes) already has such a system. It's called Flarm (on Wikipedia) and was primarily introduced to avoid midair collisions between gliders as well as between gliders and obstacles such as powerlines in montaineous areas.
It's true P2P and works like: GPS locates itself, beacon (think garage door opener channels) sends position and some other data, receives the same from other gliders, predicts trajectories and gives alert if collision is possible. The raw number of units on the (ha!) air at the same time in the roughly same spot is rather low compared to cars. Of course you still need to look out... Openness of the standard has/had some issues, but i am not current on this one.
This already exists -- but it's limited to emergency vehicles. They can't instantly switch a red light to green, but the traffic light can prolong its green cycle or shorten its red cycle in order to keep traffic moving in the direction the emergency vehicle is traveling.
For general public use, it could be helpful in low-traffic areas and times, but as soon as you have competing demands for a green light, you're back to making someone stop and wait. In many cases, it would be almost as good to shorten cycle times during times of day that are typically low-traffic, or convert the signal to a flashing-red "stop sign" behavior/rule.
There's few things more irritating to me than waiting for a red light when there are no other vehicles at an intersection.
All I want is a simple way to communicate to the traffic light to let it know that I am approaching so I don't have to stop.
Then the traffic light could tell you, "shut up and wait, I'm on my lunch break."
Oh, I thought you meant a traffic light that talks to the other drivers saying 'stop fucker, you're gonna ram somebody'...
Of course I hope the voices are moddable.
From what I understand (and I've been looking at a stack of DoT documents recently), the intent is there but in a slightly modified form. You might be told how fast you should drive to arrive at a green light. This saves even more fuel and works at higher traffic loads. You can't expect the light to adapt to you exclusively, but you can tell everyone how fast they should drive.
You mean uniquely identify your location to within a few meters so that anyone in the world who has access can find you in a way that is different from the way the cell phone that is almost certainly in your pocket does it right now? Forget congress and the cops -- it is a commercial service and if I was willing to pay Verizon another medium sized wad of cash every month I could spend my afternoons watching my own children move around on itty-bitty maps as they ride the bus home...
/. didn't adopt as part of its new look, so we are all vulnerable to sheepish exploitation I suppose -- this might not even be me typing these words, I dunno) every word you type is exposed and your connection itself is available for hijack. Every time you use a credit card or bank card to make a purchase, you are located to within meters to anyone with access. To anyone with access to ALL of this stuff -- your precise location (plus all of your phone conversations, obviously easily tappable) via your cell phone, your electronic transactions via your electronically mediated consumer transaction history, your online connection patter and perhaps 2/3 of its actual unprotected content -- well hell, I could sit here in my house in a bathrobe, scratching my balls, and watch a significant fraction of your life unfold in real time without your knowledge.
Wow. Good idea to keep that barn door firmly shut. The horse that's peering over your shoulder as you nail it closed is a bit puzzled, though.
There are a few things everybody is just going to have to get used to in the next decade. One, for example, is that copyright laws are going to survive in an era when it is impossible to prevent the zero-marginal-cost instant reproduction of all electronic forms of art. Evolution in action on that one, and as always the cute little rats and cockroaches are winning and eating the guts out of the publishing industry dinosaurs, which is about to do a major fail as the brick and mortar book industry more or less collapses the way the brick and mortar music distribution industry and the brick and mortar movie rental industry already have. Another is that any notion of personal privacy when connected to The Network you might have had is going to evaporate, with a tiny handful of ubergeek exceptions capable of staying ahead of the security and privacy curve. Every time you connect to an ISP, you are located. Every second you are online you are located and for the most part, unless you use a secure connection protocol (which I note that
And it is still only 2011. Cash money still exists. We haven't yet installed the road control network that we will install, the nearly ubiquitous electronic eyes that we will install, the electronic health monitoring systems that we will install that will (for example) continuously record and report things like blood sugar and eeg information via transient bursts of network connection to save your life -- and in the process function as a de facto lie detector and personal locator quite possibly built right into your skin along with your pacemaker, we don't yet have the neural interfaces that will provide butt-kicking amazing access and control to video games and work and cybernetic prostheses -- all snoopable for everything from personal location to lie-stress information to real-time access to audio and/or video without your knowledge. Cell phones that can be remotely turned on without your knowledge so that they just passively listen to your environment. They could be doing it now, couldn't they? How would you ever know? Gee, your battery runs down a little faster than you expected -- like that never happens.
So enough of the paranoia. Either drop off of the grid -- move to the jungles of Panama, or find yourself an island in the south pacific with no cell service and no internet -- or accept the fact that security and privacy are and always have been a trade-off, one that dates back to the first social groups
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Heh.
You still get spam in your inbox, don't you?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Outstanding, now my car can tell all the other cars a crash is imminent if they don't get off my road! (There's a hack for that.)
Ford will know who is who, where they are, where they are going, what kind of mileage they get, and how loud the driver yelled when he spilled hot coffee on his lap while attempting to punch in a cell phone number while attempting to negotiate a high-speed lane change.
Multiply this by all the other car companies, post the results as a Facebook app, and brother, you've got yourself some valuable data.
Not all that new, really. Singapore implemented government tracking of every single vehicle, oh, at least a decade ago.
-kgj
I have often wondered why modern cars lack even a bit of horse sense. If you were riding a horse, it knows enough to not to collide with the horses around it.
It would be cool if traffic data could be forwarded from car to car, so that you could have data from conditions beyond your wireless range.
"Hey officer! This is the white Ford alongside you! My driver just came out of a bar!"
There is no trust relationship between cars, especially if there is no non-repudiation mechanism built in.
This system would create as many problems as it solves.
The light would still lag. Why? Because pedestrians might be crossing and you can't just tell them to jump out of the way because some car doesn't want to brake. So at the shortest the red phase will last for the time it takes an average pedestrian to cross the road plus a safety margin unless the lights were preparing for a green phase anyway.
If the intersection is very unlikely to have pedestrians you still need a bit of lag in order to let anyone without a transponder clear the crossing street. The lag might be short enough to let you slow down without stopping entirely, of course.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Or maybe the pedestrian crossings rest on red too. If you cross on a red man and get squished, it's your fault.
I'd like similar tech employed for elevators. It's a huge time waste to have to approach the elevator, then signal it, then wait. I guess a low-tech solution would be to place additional elevator call buttons on approach.
Yah. And if I can spoof that signal, pretend to be a string of 8 cars, spread out over a 100 meters, then I get to go even faster.
What happens if you jam that signal on a busy freeway?
What if you can get the codes so that you are seen by the system as an ambulance?
Or drop a hockey puck sized transmitter at a stop light that makes the light broadcast that's 'green' both ways.
I can just see people wwatching Simson's reruns on their way to work counting on the system to tell them when they have to pay attention.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
... it was called ... um ... cars!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
I've put 67000 miles on my Focus in 2 years. No major maintenance due until 100,000. Change the oil every 5000-7500 miles. No problems to report so far, except a road rock knocking out my foglamp. Don't know what year model the two you had problems with were, but their newer vehicles are fantastic.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
I do go round roundabouts without slowing down (much!), but then I drive a lightweight Japanese roadster. I wouldn't recommend trying this in the average American car! I only really need to slow down when the visibility's reduced by buildings or plants.
...just what I want....my car to rat me out to other cars about my singing when Im in traffic.
Joe Investor
We don't need to be so intrusive. Each car can be taught to learn to put on the break light during any problem. This would alert the next car, which would be monitoring the break light. The cars all around the car that made the alert via the break light, would all become aware of a bad situation and then either access the problem themselves, or can enter into communication with the other cars, only if necessary, and with a secure method.
I think it's more appropriate to look at the security of qmail which was designed with security in mind vs sendmail. This software should be closer to qmail and over a few years will be patched and hardened. If the system is used for the next twenty or thirty years, that few years of hardening will have likely been worth it.