Gov’t to require cars be able to talk to each other
WASHINGTON — All new cars and light trucks would be able to talk wirelessly with each other, with traffic lights and with other roadway infrastructure under a proposal released Tuesday by the Transportation Department. Officials say the technology holds the potential to dramatically reduce traffic deaths and transform driving.
Vehicle-to-vehicle communications, or V2V, enables cars to transmit their locations, speed, direction and other information ten times per second. That lets cars detect, for example, when another vehicle is about to run a red light, is braking hard, changing lanes or coming around a blind turn in time for a driver to prevent a crash.
The technology has the potential to prevent or mitigate the severity of up to 80 per cent of collisions that don’t involve alcohol or drugs, officials said.
Automakers and the government have been working together on developing and testing the technology for more than a decade. Under the department’s proposal, V2V systems would be required to “speak the same language” through standardized messaging the government has developed with industry.