A simple idea showing how much can be done with basic Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and a bit of local intelligence.
When a driver hits the brakes, the cars following behind may not see the telltale red lights if driving around a bend or caught up in foggy weather conditions. The Ford Motor Company hopes to make the roads safer with a warning system that transmits a ‘brake light’ alert to the dashboards of cars following behind.
The ‘Electronic Brake Light’ proved it could allow drivers to brake earlier and avoid collisions—or at least reduce the severity of accidents—during a four-year research project concluded in Dec. 2012. Such technology represented just one of 20 possible car systems tested by Ford and presented as part of the Safe Intelligent Mobility—Testfield Germany (simTD) project, according to a press release on June 20.
(…snip…)The smart car technology shows the advantages of having networked cars ‘talking’ to one another on the roads, even if self-driving autonomous cars have not yet become widely available. Smarter cars may even communicate with traffic control systems to reduce or eliminate problems such as traffic congestion.
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