Imaginary but awesome: Car communication

Note: I found this post when going through my old blog archives from years ago. I still really like this idea. Here’s the old post, pretty much verbatim:

I have a really cool idea that’s got so much potential: We totally need to begin making cars that can wirelessly communicate with each other. It’d be like a modern version of CB radio!

This idea has a lot of pretty interesting correlaries. Imagine the idea of Web 2.0 information sharing being carried over to the highway! It’d improve traffic safety, make road trips take less time, and reduce highway congestion. It would also create a very accurate database of information about traffic patterns, which could be made public domain so that highway departments would have a far easier time improving traffic flow.

Here I’ve listed some of the ways car communication could make driving cleaner, safer, and more enjoyable for everyone:

You’d have to set up a P2P type of network (a flat hierarchy—-every node in the network would be on the same level as every other) for the cars to communicate with each other. Potentially, in cities, at homes, and at interstate rest stops, you could also have cars communicate with wireless computer networks in the area, so that the information could stream online. People could log on to a web site and find the road conditions for Route 66 with a few mouse clicks. :-)
Cars could monitor surrounding traffic patterns by measuring things like average speed per car and car density per mile of highway and broadcast the information to passing cars via a wireless router under the hood, or combined with the radio antenna. Imagine going down a highway and recieving up-to-the-minute traffic updates from cars passing in the other direction!
Sensors on the bottom of your car could pick up information about the condition of the road itself. Likewise, weather could be monitored by sensors on the roof or along the edges of your car.
Since police scanners are illegal most places, this kind of technology would probably be pretty severely regulated. Once the government started realizing that the benefits of this kind of communication far outweigh the drawbacks, they’d probably hop on the P2P-bandwagon too and possibly include roadside fixtures to extend the network (and make it easier for them to synthesize car data as well).

If you have any points to add, I’d be happy to hear your comments. Maybe making this idea possible is one of the first projects I’ll undertake after I graduate from college!

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RPI tackled this back in 2005. It helped spur a lot of technology that lets web-enabled phones and GPS systems to share traffic information with the net. I only happen to know because I was one of the drivers for it...got me a shiny new PDA and GPS ;)

http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2241&setappvar=page(1)

http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=674

From Chris on March 7th, 2010.

Zach shared this one on Google Reader awhile back
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/09/bump-is-a-social-network-for-your-license-plate/

not exactly the same, but similar.

P.S. I've had this idea before too (being able to communicate with other drivers in a reasonable way would be nice)

From Todd Deshane on February 12th, 2011.

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From HalItalty on January 9th.

Imaginary but awesome: Car communication

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