The technology that warned of the impending
collision will start appearing in cars in just a
couple of years. Called car-to-car or vehicle-to- vehicle communication, it lets cars broadcast their
position, speed, steering-wheel position, brake status, and other data to other vehicles within a
few hundred meters. The other cars can use such information to build a detailed picture of what’s unfolding around them, revealing trouble that even the most careful and alert driver, or the best sensor system, would miss or fail to anticipate.
Already many cars have instruments that use
radar or ultrasound to detect obstacles or
vehicles. But the range of these sensors is limited
to a few car lengths, and they cannot see past
the nearest obstruction.
Car-to-car communication should also have a
bigger impact than the advanced vehicle
automation technologies that have been more
widely heralded. Though self-driving cars could
eventually improve safety, they remain imperfect
and unproven, with sensors and software too
easily bamboozled by poor weather, unexpected
obstacles or circumstances, or complex city
driving. Simply networking cars together
wirelessly is likely to have a far bigger and more
immediate effect on road safety.
Creating a car-to-car network is still a complex
challenge. The computers aboard each car
process the various readings being broadcast by
other vehicles 10 times every second, each time
calculating the chance of an impending collision.
Transmitters use a dedicated portion of wireless
spectrum as well as a new wireless standard,
802.11p, to authenticate each message.
Expect More News Concerning Car To Car Communication