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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.
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.
William George
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You were saying?
"They" don't have to put cameras in cars, "We" are doing it for "them"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You'll note this decision doesn't prevent car manufacturers from implementing this or a similar system, it just doesn't throw people who build cars in jail if they decide their customers will want something different, like lower costs, or a different style of safety feature, or even a similar system which is more advanced later on.
When the government mandates something like this, it creates legal lock-in of that specific solution, preventing better things for customers from occurring. Imagine if every car built was required to implement the 802.11a standard at the time it became a standard, for example. Sure, it's easy with 20/20 hindsight to explain what a disaster that would've been, but at the time people would've been claiming the government needed to ensure every car used the same protocol. All a similar regulation really does is prevent alternate solutions, lower costs options and future different forms of innovation.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I looked into some of the leading designs, and there is zero protection against surveillance or even consideration for privacy. You could literally set up passive beacon, collect IDs and speed readings, and connect it to a mailer to issue speeding tickets.
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
>> jeopardizing one of the most promising technologies for preventing traffic deaths.
Using technology to get around the fact that Americans can and do get a driving licence despite being an awful, clueless driver is a shit idea that can't and doesn't address the core problem at all.
The government needs to address the problem directly by mandating much stricter driving tests that include demonstrating an ability to actually be able to drive, such as controlling and handling a car well in all conditions, especially at the edge of performance. Just memorizing all the traffic signs/laws which is what they currently test for, in no way automatically makes anyone a good driver.
At least here in AZ, the amount of distracted drivers texting while driving, and people that think its ok to never indicate even when very much cutting you off is a serious problem,
The cops never seem to focus on stopping those people though, they only seem to penalize people that are actually driving safely other than exceeding the speed limit by a few mph.