Government Won't Pursue Talking Car Mandate (apnews.com)

An anonymous reader shares an AP report: The Trump administration has quietly set aside plans to require new cars to be able to wirelessly talk to each other, auto industry officials said, jeopardizing one of the most promising technologies for preventing traffic deaths. The Obama administration proposed last December that all new cars and light trucks come equipped with technology known as vehicle-to-vehicle communications, or V2V. It would enable vehicles to transmit their location, speed, direction and other information 10 times per second. That lets cars detect, for example, when another vehicle is about to run a red light or coming around a blind turn in time to prevent a crash. The administration has decided not to pursue a final V2V mandate, said two auto industry officials who have spoken with White House and Transportation Department officials and two others whose organizations have spoken to the administration.

Comments

Stupid Idea

[sycodon]

May as well just put cameras in the cars too. If your going to fuck over privacy, might as well go all the way.

And don't talk about Safety because when this was proposed...and even now, there is no system that would mitigate impending wrecks.

Nope, I think they had something completely different in mind than Safety.

Re:If ppl would just put the cell phone down

[WilliamGeorge]

Right, because no one ever died in car accidents before the invention of the cell phone.

Now mind you, I don't know that I liked the idea of V2V communication anyway. It sounds cool in theory, but the more complex we make all these systems the more chances there are for people to manipulate things to cause harm. If self-driving cars depend on such technology, then messing with it could cause as many problems as it solves. I'd prefer that each self-driving car be able to do its job without inter-car communication, which seems doable given the way that tech is evolving today.

Re:If ppl would just put the cell phone down

[HiThere]

No, but it does prevent it from being very useful. For that technology to be useful in preventing accidents probably well over half the cars on the road would need to use it. Possibly over 3/4. So even if it were enforced it would take several years before it would do much good. And it mainly helps the vehicles avoiding someone else behaving illegally...and possibly mainly helps vehicles under automatic control. That would depend on implementation details.