Government Wants to Accelerate Car-to-Car Communication
What if your car knew that an oncoming driver engrossed in his smartphone would blow the stop sign ahead? You’d avoid a serious accident by waiting for him to fly by, thanks to his car sending electronic signals to yours. That’s the hope of so-called vehicle-to-vehicle, or V2V, communication, which federal officials think could reduce 70 to 80 percent of crashes.
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On Wednesday, federal officials announced plans to require the auto industry to adopt standard V2V communication sooner than previously anticipated. Expect a proposal later this year, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters, according to USA Today. That’s quite a bit ahead of the original timetable, wherein the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration planned requirements by early 2017.
It comes after more than a year of testing on public roads around Ann Arbor, Mich., with some 2,800 cars equipped with V2V functionality. Still, the communication needs a certain portion of the wireless spectrum to be reserved for cars, and the Federal Communications Commission is considering a bill in Congress that would allow certain Wi-Fi signals to share the same space.
The specter of congestion with other signals doesn’t seem to have deterred the industry. Already, Cadillac has announced V2V capabilities in at least two upcoming cars, and Toyota has also signaled plans to incorporate it. Federal officials have been mulling a requirement for more than a year, though the eventual proposal won’t phase in for at least a few model years.
