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GM Working On Wi-Fi Direct-Equipped Cars To Detect Pedestrians and Cyclists
cylonlover writes "General Motors is working to expand upon its vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication systems that allow information to be shared between vehicles and infrastructure to provide advance warning of potential road hazards, such as stalled vehicles, slippery roads, road works, intersections, stop signs and the like. The automaker is now looking to add pedestrians and cyclists to the mix using Wi-Fi Direct technology so a car can detect them in low visibility conditions before the driver does."
I think deer are a much bigger problem than cyclists or pedestrians.
If you need your car to detect obstacles for you, you're driving too fast. Because there's no way this is going to work 100% - not every pedestrian is carrying a device with Wi-Fi eneabled - so what do you do when you're relying on it and it fails?
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
to get hacked, especially knowing how good american companies are at making security systems....
Drivers already don't look where they're going when using a GPS, now they won't lookout for dangers or other users of the road because the car will tell them.
As a motorcyclist, hell, I'd trust a TI-85 with a camera to steer, over the uncomfortably large percentage of SUV drivers that occasionally interrupt their texting sessions by glancing up at the road. Anything that improves the technology to prevent careless accidents is good in my book, and I would think the most beneficial application would be in respects to the self-driven cars, like the ones Google is developing, no?
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Send message to that slug in front of me. Road construction ahead. Take next right for detour. Drive on by after he turns into driveway.
Since the Government Motors company doesn't really have to care about money anymore, it can waste resources on such things rather than working on better cars, they'll be doing these types of gimmicks, then, when they have 'something', the government will pass a LAW that nobody can have a car without such a system installed in it, the rest of the manufacturers will be forced to pay for licensing of these patents and then the prices for the cars will go up and choices for the cars will be diminished in USA.
Final touch will be to ensure that everybody must take their older car to retrofit it with this type of a device. The device will have GPS and who knows what else built into it, will be on a mobile network and it will have the ability to stall the car by a central command.
There will be multiple cameras in the car, some looking forward, some looking back, some looking sideways and a couple looking into the car for good measure, it's all going to be sold as something that's 'necessary' to make the technology work.
Once nobody can drive a car without this type of a package, the government will have access to every vehicle, it's location, the driver and passenger faces, probably some other biometrics. Everything linked and cross-checked against every database, from insurance and driver licensing to CIA and FBI and NSA and DHS and all the rest of it. Face and voice recognition and recording, remote control and a convenient guidance system for your friendly 24/7 police drone monitoring its own 10x10 km zone, maybe with a couple of air to surface missiles.
Oh, did I forget to say that the NDAA approved POTUS authorised kill list may just become on of the cross-references for this system?
You can't handle the truth.
Will it warn me of smokey in the bush or bears taking pictures? Because if not then I'm sticking with my tried and true CB radio, good buddy
The funny thing is that almost none of this will matter at all. Over the last 4 decades we've employed a variety of engineering improvements like air bags, anti lock brakes, better tires and suspensions, backup cameras, crush zones and so forth. This reduced the accident and death rates through around 1990-1995. Since 1990, those rates have remained almost exactly the same, year on year.
This means a couple of things. One is that cell phones had no effect on accident rates, because they've remained the same from 1990-2010. It also means that the crusade on drunk driving had no results as far as reported accidents. It also means that this system will have no beneficial effect until the driver is removed from the equation and the technology is perfected to a level where its significantly better than the driver it replaces.
Driving is boring to most people that have been doing it for a while, so they seek distractions from the boredom. Doesn't matter what distraction or tool you add to or remove from the equation, we'll fix our boredom somehow. In the 70's when I almost got run over by someone in a parking lot, you couldn't scream "Put down the %$@#ing phone!", it was "Damn woman driver!" or some such.
Further most people are simply unaware of the simplest rules of the road like right of way, proper turning, safe following distance and so forth.
So if you don't know what you're really supposed to be doing and you're actively looking for escape from the primary activity, adding some iffy technology that can't do much better than 70-80% in effectiveness will simply further reduce our interest in paying attention to driving.
And $10 says we'll get the same exact accident rate if and when this technology is deployed.
...a crash of physical proportions will occur.
I dont carry any wifi devices, so when I get ran over by some troddle dick its now my fault cause he wasnt paying attention
So, if some bratty kid tosses their sibling's wifi device out of their car, my car sees it in the road and goes nuts, gets me rear-ended, injured, etc??? Fuck that sideways.
Someone at GM needs to be fired. And, should be spayed and or neutered... We don't need any more of this type of stupid in the gene pool TYVFM.
detect pedestrians you say ? animals ? yawn
BMWs have had night vision since 2006
Mercedes, BMW, Audi all have night vision tech available today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqTlW6CmapY
How long until someone tapes a "Wi-Fi Direct-enabled smartphone" to someone's car and the app is set to go off randomly? Or just puts a transmitter in the middle of the street and sets it to go off randomly?
How long until the RIAA jumps on the words "peer to peer" and that "music files or contact information could also be securely transferred from the home computer to a vehicle’s infotainment or navigation system" via Wi-Fi Direct devices?
How long until a deranged geek realizes that anyone running a Wi-Fi Direct app can be triangulated, tracked, and shot with a weapon hooked up to an automated targeting system?
How long until SETI is ported to Wi-fi Direct apps? Granted, there would need be some hacking needed on the car's CPU/OS as well.
The route I am taking to work has:
stalled vehicles, slippery roads, road works,
earthquakes, zombie attacks, and a paparazzi drag race with Justin Bieber and Lindsay Lohan.
You should avoid driving on my route to work.
Such a system is just begging to be Black Hatted.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
And boy am I pleased. This vehicle will last beyond my life expectancy and there is nothing nanny about it, I tell you what.
... would be a "push" version of accident/traffic/road condition reports. I can "pull" much of this on my smartphone, but that's not a good thing to do while driving. "Pushed" reports (audio?) for your GPS-specific location and heading could be damn helpful.
,add cop cars, speed traps, and radar and photo ticket vehicles.
Over the last 4 decades we've employed a variety of engineering improvements like air bags, anti lock brakes, better tires and suspensions, backup cameras, crush zones and so forth. This reduced the accident and death rates through around 1990-1995. Since 1990, those rates have remained almost exactly the same, year on year.
Meanwhile, pedestrian and cyclist deaths have gone up because US road safety consists of "make crashes as survivable as we can for the people in the cars, because we've felt they are inevitable." As a result, the death rates for peds and cyclists is 5-10x that of countries where there are vulnerable user laws. Basically: if you hit a pedestrian or cyclist - you have to prove it was their fault, and if you can't, YOU are assumed at fault. Not the other way around, where we assume it was the fault of the pedestrian or cyclist. Such an injury or death is also a criminal matter.
Please help metamoderate.
I've wondered if crowdsourcing might eventually result in auto-recognition of cop cars and a warning sent out to other drivers. Maybe even a system where the locations of all police vehicles are broadcast in real time.
If you do not have a Facebook account, you're road kill.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
The basic reason for that is that, there is no way for someone to apologize for a minor infraction. If I cut some one off unintentionally, it would help me if I could flash sorry to the driver. Or to say thank you to a fellow motorist. If this car to car wifi would send quick messages like "sorry" or "thank you" or "excuse me", it would improve the behavior of people tremendously. Would it happen with car to car wifi?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
How you never heard of risk compensation?
I think that's a move in the right direction, even if using wifi seems a security concern. If the system will alert the drive instead of taking automatic control it might be a better compromise in the case of false positives or abuse.
The next step is to have speed limiters that do not allow you to drive faster than the speed limit. No more "high speed pursuit" etc. I know people hate this idea but at the end of the day if it's illegal to go over the speed limit, why allow it?
Finally we will see self-driving vehicle in dedicated automated lanes. It will become similar to a train journey except it's a private train that goes where you need it, more comfort and less annoying teens playing with ring tones.
We're still a bit far from a practical flying car so I wouldn't hold my breathe. (No, helicopters do not count as flying cars)
I don't know about the rest of you but I'm excited about this, maybe my kid won't kill himself and passengers with this technology. Heck, maybe your kid won't kill mine.
Great idea.
To put things into proportion, how long till some drunk or texting clot wipes out some unlucky pedestrian?
Less than 24 hours, almost guaranteed (3000+ peds per year killed by car crashes, or 8 per day).
Can't wait to see what kind of foolhardy smartphone solution Microsoft cooks up for this. Clearly UAC or some related security measure will be involved: Are you sure you want to allow this device to--CRASH!