Feds To Announce Whether Cars Will Be Required To Be Equipped With Car-To-Car Communication Technology

Announcement expected at midday today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal officials are planning to announce whether automakers should be required to equip new cars and light trucks with technology that enables vehicles to communicate with each other to prevent collisions. Such vehicle-to-vehicle communication promises to transform traffic safety.

The Department of Transportation has scheduled the announcement for midday Monday. Transportation officials estimate the technology could prevent up to 80 percent of accidents that don't involve drunken drivers or mechanical failure.

Comments

[Brendan]

"A transponder would continually transmit the vehicle's position, heading, speed and other information 10 times per second in all directions using radio signals similar to Wi-Fi."

We know exactly why they want this and it has nothing to do with safety.

Without reading the proposal, let's guess the following: P
-Police and government vehicles will be exempt or able to selectively disable the transmission of their signals
-There will be some sort of mandatory tie in to the vehicle computer to prevent disabling this technology
-There will be a requirement at some point to include VIN in this broadcast
-Governments will contract with private companies to spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to put up readers on freeflowing urban highways (rare, but it happens) and long, flat, desolate highways.
-The NSA, FBI, CIA, state police, etc. will claim they don't have access to this information.
-It will come out that they've had access to it the whole time and were engaging in 'parallel construction' with that data.

[rxc]

But think of all the child suffering it will save...

[Free Society]

Yep. This goes for every innocuous looking government mandate, regulation and law. Give an inch, they a take mile and then assure you it was only an inch.

[IT]

You are right with all you above.

Further, I can't exactly figure out how it would work. It's one thing for avoidance collision like this technology for automated cars because there is a constant feedback. For humans driving in traffic the transponder would continually be emitting warnings (to a point of distraction) or a warning would come so late that little could be done.

Doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Thus, it will happen.

[Free Society]

And I thought license plates were bad. Now this?