Of course, in the future when all cars are connected (even if they're not self-driving), combining all this sensor data and sending it to the vehicles behind you would save countless lives. The number of times you hear about pile-ups in fog and heavy rain - that could all be avoided by cars talking to each other.
But I'll bet there's still no open (or even closed) standard on inter-manufacturer comms yet?
There is no doubt that intelligent highways would be a massive target for terrorist and cyber attacks. However, one thing in our favour is the fact there is so little technology already in place, since they won't be burdened with decades' worth of insecure legacy systems: at least they'll be able to start out building infrastructure in full knowledge that it better be secure.
US voting machines didn't have to deal with legacy technology and still turned pretty bad from an infosec POV.
The lesson we do need to learn is future-proofing: whatever infrastructure we install on the millions of miles of public highway will need to be serviceable for decades.
You have your own trusted sources of information, and you have your secondary sources of information, which you apply trust levels to. Your own trusted sources of information are your own senses, your sight, hearing, feeling (touch), smell, etc. You may have something communicated to you about your condition or environment through these senses, but it's silly to take that at face value without confirming with your own senses. If your friend next to you that you trust tells you that you're about to walk into a wall, you look ahead. If you can't see a wall, you might slow and exercise caution until you figure out why you were relayed that information, but unless you can completely stop without problem, you don't do that without cause.
I think it's a mistake to think of cards in the future communicating as a swarm. They need to be able to function independently, and also to take in extra information from the group when the group is available, and make decisions on that. That's less swarm behavior than social behavior, so we should consider groups of cars on the road a social groups, and the same information dynamics exhibited in those groups apply.
1: http://gizmodo.com/how-a-hacker-could-hijack-an-airplane-fro...
2: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/V2V/Readines... (PDF link)
Say your car A trusts other cars B, C ... Y to varying degree in a WoT. It meets a brand new car Z that is not yet trusted by any cars A-Y. Car A receives a message from Z, to which it assigns 0 credence points, meaning this data is not taken into account in any decisions. If car A then makes an observation confirming the message, car A now trusts Z by +1 point, and lets other cars know this. (I'm unsure how to make aggregation/distribution of trust work smoothly, but I believe the random mixing of traffic patterns will work in the system's favor.)
So gradually car Z becomes trusted, up to some maximum, e.g. 100. The only worry then is a malicious actor who mostly sends true messages, but that's hard to distinguish from a car with a sometimes faulty sensor. Those problems could be handled the same way, namely aggressively penalising a car for sending incorrect data (e.g. by -30), such that it's quickly distrusted, together with a prominent warning in the failing car when it goes below 0 trust that it needs maintenance (after which trust would be reset to 0). Possibly also increased insurance premium if your car remains with a trust below 0.
This touches on the much more likely scenario whereby the car's internal data doesn't mesh with the data from it's sensors. If the sign says "one way" it is a one way street. What google maps says doesn't matter. Current warning signs trump previously recorded data. "But google maps said I could do 70!" will be no defense.
This sounds very much like you're describing an antivirus program, which we all know works perfectly well /s
None of the causes in listed in this article require interconnection to avoid: http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-cause-of-the-most-fatal-ca...
Now, that can be solved by people slowing down due to conditions. But how slow is slow enough? Often it's slow enough that the person behind you is gonna wreck into you.
Maybe pile-ups aren't deadly, but wouldn't it be better if we had tech that helped prevent them? Or do maimings not matter?
Either way, interconnections won't help you -- what if the car is crashed hard enough (or long enough for the battery to run down) that it's beacon is off/broadcasting wrong information? What if there's fallen tree or a pedestrian on the road? Generally, sensors (radar) can see through fog, and that's the most help you're going to get in a situation like this.
Yes, maimings do matter. But they don't count towards "save [ing] countless lives".
Doesn't that mean we're just back at the situation we're in today? The worse situation?
> What if there's fallen tree or a pedestrian on the road?
Also, not the situation at hand. Talking about the case where a car has crashed and is letting the cars behind it know that it has done so. It's like electronic flare deployment (or hazard lights.)
Don't you think that a lot of lives and livelihoods could be saved if we had such functionality?
I grew up in the northeast. Abrupt and unpredicted snowstorms are common, and some of them are dense enough to drop visibility laughably low - 10-15 mph would offer visible stopping (and be a fairly acceptable speed for a crash regardless). People don't want to take six hours to get home, so they keep driving. If the roads are decent, they keep driving at ~30 mph or faster to make decent time.
So now you have a situation where all the other drivers are exceeding their visibility. If you drop down to 10 mph, you get to be the obstacle they hit at >30 mph when you loom up out of the snow!
The result is that everyone goes 20 mph or faster, because everyone else is. Yes, that's stupid and dangerous. No, there isn't any 'safe' behavior available if you get caught out on those highways.
- Don't live in the northeast.
- Don't drive in bad weather conditions.
- Don't organize your life around automobiles such that you can't manage daily life without one.
All I can really say is that I've definitely been on the road at moments where I realized that 100% of my options were dangerous accident risks. At that point you mostly try to minimize likely crash speed (if everyone goes 15-20 on a divided highway, probably no one will die) and look for an exit.
Fog is tricky. Fog can give the driver a false sense of security. Modern overly-reflective road markers can, at night, make a driver think they are seeing further through fog than they are. They can see the lines, but can they see the black car parked ahead? Note too that large pile-ups in fog often involve trucks. Imho much of that is because truck trailers have poor running lights. We see the cars ahead. We follow their taillights through the fog. But that black truck flatbed trailer with two tiny red orbs is invisible. Or we think it is further away.
Fog also thickens unevenly. It blows around. Slamming on the brakes immediately upon entering a bank isn't going to make you any friends amongst the people behind you. That truck 4 seconds behind you (a reasonable distance on a highway at night) might not stop as quickly as your ferrari. Truck drivers are also much higher. They may have greater visibility than you and not realize that your sports car places your eyeballs in the low-level fog. The safest bet in traffic is generally not to act abruptly and unexpectedly.
(fyi, a sportbiker's helmeted head is also generally much higher than in cars, even SUVs. They too have better visibility in fog.)
And if you forget to turn on your car's taillights, all is lost. There is a reason that motorcycles have them hardwired on.
In the real world pileups typically happen when you suddenly go from full visibility to dense fog (or snow) with no warning.
So maybe instead of blaming people who could not do anything about it, see if there is a way to help them.
I don't really see the value of saying "human error, so who cares about solving it with tech!" It's human error that happens all the time, and causes plenty of injuries and expense. Falling off a cliff is human error, but we still put up railings where it's likely to happen.
And as you pointed out, it's not human error that a single driver can solve - if you go slow enough to be safe, you're likely to get hit from behind by someone who didn't. Since the reality is that drivers are faced with having no safe strategy, it's a problem I'd love to see solved.
You're so funny. This is a world of proprietary technology.
CANbus could work, and it's already used in the automotive world. It's nice because the higher-priority bus driver is not delayed. Unfortunately, the lower priority one gets run over. Might have to work on that.