
Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Could Replace Traffic Lights, Shorten Commutes - GG2
https://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/infrastructure/how-vehicletovehicle-communication-could-replace-traffic-lights-and-shorten-commutes
======
adamb
Car manufacturers are extremely careful about the failure modes of components
and sensors they put in their vehicles. Consider the design of the CAN bus,
which has explicit support for failed and misbehaving peers.

I have yet to see these sorts of considerations in _any_ V2V communication
system. The idea that my car might act on (or propagate) incorrect/sabotaged
information that it receives from a "peer" is a terrifying form of fragility.

This sort of failure mode needs to be studied and addressed directly before
any of these systems are deployed.

It should also be assumed that these new patterns of information propagation
will create a huge financial incentive for people to sell after market
modifications that exploit the trust models of these protocols.

~~~
14
I think this falls under the idea that we need to reach perfectionism before
we deploy something. That simply isn't true in my opinion. Many accidents
already happen every day. If this system reduces that dramatically it's a win.
Even if there are some failures along the way they will be noticed and
improved upon.

~~~
adamb
Nothing about my comment advocates for perfectionism.

My point is that V2V systems and research papers I've seen just don't make
meaningful claims about safety. They instead make claims about convenience and
efficiency, which are not substitutes for safety.

We know to test vehicles for crash safety before putting them on the road.

While I believe there are certainly ways to make use of V2V communication that
increase overall safety, I haven't seen anything remotely resembling a crash
test for V2V systems.

Creating a system that relies on the correct behavior of _all_ components is
not a recipe for safety or reliability. This is especially true as the number
of components increases (this happens when a car exchanges messages with all
the cars around it).

We need V2V systems that rely only on correct behavior of _any_ component and
allow for malicious behavior of _some_ components.

The idea that a protocol version mismatch from some rolling deploy can cause
injuries _in cars made by other manufacturers_ is the sort of thing that I
haven't seen a single person point out. How would something like this even be
caught and debugged?

Advocating for an ecosystem where these things are likely but neither
addressed nor considered is just plain irresponsible.

~~~
jsight
I agree with you. It has always been my hope that these oversights are a
direct result of the projects struggling to find a baseline level of value
rather than any underlying lack of forethought.

The level of security and approach to security will largely correlate to the
types of messages that such a system ultimately needs. This sounds obvious,
but I think it really isn't. In a world of self-driving vehicles with lidar +
optical sensors, how much v2v communication is required beyond the sensor
data?

Until that question is answered, it might not make sense to primarily focus on
the security and reliability of said data.

~~~
adamb
I think there is something romantic about the siren's song that is "we don't
need object detection or velocity estimation if all objects self-report their
location, velocity, and intent".

I hope you're right and that once we establish best case utility, as a
community we refocus on handling component failures more gracefully.

Although it's unclear if the second and third order system effects in our
financial system will ever get that sort of treatment. So let's hope driving
gets a bit closer to flying (and farther from wall street) in terms of
attitude towards safety.

EDIT: clarity

------
toast0
> The principle behind the traffic light has hardly changed since the device
> was invented in 1912 and deployed in Salt Lake City, and two years later, in
> Cleveland. It works on a timer-based approach, which is why you sometimes
> find yourself sitting behind a red light at an intersection when there are
> no other cars in sight. The timing can be adjusted to match traffic patterns
> at different points in the commuting cycle, but that is about all the fine-
> tuning you can do, and it’s not much.

I guess these people never heard of common techniques to detect vehicles - in
surface wire loops to detect inductance changes from a car or bicycle, and
cameras. When the detectors are far enough back from the intersections, you
have enough time to (safely) cycle the signal for lone cars in the middle of
the night, without the car having to stop -- my experience with well tuned
traffic controls was i would just need to take my foot off the accelerator,
and the light would usually change to green before i would have started
braking.

That works well in a grid based suburb, I understand Pittsburgh has a lot more
constraints, but detectors are still useful, even if they're only at the limit
line.

Reading further:

> It’s important to note that VTL technology needs no camera, radar, or lidar.

Yes, trusting the communications network, without verifying the situation
sounds like a great idea. Just like I always hit the accelerator right when
the light turns green, without regard to if the intersection is clear, or if
there are any signs that any other vehicles are likely to pass through soon.

Sometimes, I feel like people working in the self-driving space, and the maps
for driving space have never actually driven a vehicle on the road.

~~~
bobthepanda
They also don't seem to care about other road users. The time cycles are a
feature, not a bug, because you can't use technology to speed up how quickly
an old grandma with a walker walks across the street. Grade separating roads
and pedestrians is very costly, and more importantly, not desirable, because
humans are much less able to deal with grade changes than cars, and because
underpasses and overpasses remove people from the 'eyes and ears' of the
street and create crevices for crime.

~~~
icebraining
Sure you need some timing features, but that doesn't mean you need a _cycle_ ;
for example, grandma could press a button to get the crossing light green
during times of low pedestrian movement, rather than force cars to burn gas
waiting on useless cycles.

~~~
bobthepanda
In practice, I have never seen a beg button that works well for pedestrians.
Even in the cities that I've lived in with high pedestrian mode share (New
York, Seattle) beg buttons are almost always heavily tilted in favor of
drivers; and as a result pedestrians can easily add a minute or two (dependent
on where they're walking, how many legs of an intersection they need to cross,
etc.) At one intersection, this is not a big deal, but at a lot of
intersections this can very quickly pile up; and because pedestrians don't
really accelerate quickly or have a high speed, the already small feasible
pedestrian walking distance is reduced significantly.

Conversely, most major roads these days are designed to give green waves if
you're traveling at the intended speed; you generally only catch the wrong
light once. (If that's not the case, removing a pedestrian cycle would not
really give your road any more significant priority than it already has, since
your road is already being deprioritized for the crossroad.)

~~~
toast0
In the suburbs in southern california, I'm used to one of three things
happening:

a) I walk up, the light is red in my direction; I push the button, and the
other direction turns yellow within 10 seconds (often immediately), and
shortly I get a walk sign

b) I walk up, the light is green in my direction, I push the button, and get a
walk sign immediately

c) I walk up, the light is green in my direction, I push the button, and don't
get a walk sign -- but soon the light turns yellow, and the other direction
gets to go, then i get a walk sign.

It's not too far off in the south bay (SF bay area).

It's different in the middle of a city like Seattle, where there's always a
lot of traffic, so the lights are changing frequently anyway, a lot of the
lights just have the pedestrian cycle enabled almost always; and they often
won't add the walk sign in the middle of a cycle, when it's already decided to
change the cycle in less time than is needed for a pedestrian to cross.

------
alexlrobertson
> Our solution for the short term, while physical traffic signals still
> coexist with the VTL system, is to provide pedestrians a way to give
> themselves the right-of-way. Ever since January of this year, our pilot
> program in Pittsburgh has provided a button to push that actuates a red
> light—real for the pedestrians, and virtual for the cars—at all four
> approaches to the intersection. It has worked every time.

This is what is described as a "beg button" by urbanists. Requiring
pedestrians to press a button to give them a safe window in which to cross
doesn't account for situations where pedestrians may not be able to request to
cross due to construction, disability, or other factors.

[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/03/24/seattle-campaign-
to-g...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/03/24/seattle-campaign-to-
givepedsthegreen-would-do-away-with-beg-buttons/)

~~~
adrianmonk
As a pedestrian, I feel safer if there's a button to push!

Drivers can see the walk signal too. It serves as an extra reminder to look
for a pedestrian. If it's on every time, then it conveys no information about
whether there's a pedestrian this time.

For example, I'm standing on the northwest corner, facing east and waiting to
cross. A car is also facing east and will be making a left turn across my
path. Ideally every driver looks all around, so they'll see me 90 degrees off
to their left, but in practice drivers tend to look in the direction they're
going to be driving. This means their field of vision includes the walk signal
but not me.

For that matter, I wouldn't hate the idea of expanding the button's
functionality to advertise my presence even more. Like sticking a flashing
"PEDESTRIANS PRESENT" light right next to the red/yellow/green light.

~~~
alexlrobertson
Buttons for pedestrian signals are great for safety. The point I was trying to
get across is that in the proposed system, a pedestrian would never get a
dedicated window to cross _unless_ they push the button.

------
Johnny555
Given that I still sometimes have trouble pairing my phone to my car, or my
headphones to my phone, I think we're a long way from ubiquitous vehicle-
vehicle communication that is reliable and secure enough to replace traffic
lights.

It seems the safer solution is to let the cars still vote but keep the traffic
lights and let them have the final say over who gets the green.

Traffic lights have fail-safes designed to make it impossible for both
directions getting the green at the same time, an autonomous voting system
among cars has fewer assurances of avoiding that state, even moreso if there's
a malicious hacker in the mix that set up a bogus transponder at the
intersection.

------
cdnsteve
This seems 2060 type stuff. We cant even get potholes fixed in my city.

Why not have smart traffic lights as a starting point? Realtime traffic
patterns using google maps and cameras with sensors. Data is stored for
historical patterns and for new models to be tested against.

~~~
conradev
We already have this. Traffic lights in a given municipal area are often
networked and have sensors to get traffic data.

For example, McCain (a popular manufacturer of traffic controllers), has their
own TMS (Traffic Management System):

[https://www.mccain-inc.com/images/mccain-
files/products/cut-...](https://www.mccain-inc.com/images/mccain-
files/products/cut-sheets/Software/Transparity_Adaptive.pdf)

What I _don 't_ think there is yet is any sort of neural network training
environment for a TMS, but I might be wrong.

------
eiaoa
> It’s important to note that VTL technology ... let[s] nearby cars
> communicate wirelessly. DSRC developers envisioned various uses, including
> electronic toll collection and cooperative adaptive cruise control—and also
> precisely the function we are using it for, intersection collision
> avoidance.

I really hope that vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure
communication is architected to preserve privacy. I really don't want my car
constantly transmitting its license plate number, VIN, or even a randomly-
generated GUID all the time to all comers. If it does, it'll end up being like
having a license plate reader at every intersection and on every police car:
your movements would no longer have _any_ privacy.

However, it's probably a super-hard engineering problem to build a privacy-
preserving vehicle communication system, so it's unlikely it'll be done.

> The principle behind the traffic light has hardly changed since the device
> was invented in 1912 and deployed in Salt Lake City, and two years later, in
> Cleveland. It works on a timer-based approach, which is why you sometimes
> find yourself sitting behind a red light at an intersection when there are
> no other cars in sight. The timing can be adjusted to match traffic patterns
> at different points in the commuting cycle, but that is about all the fine-
> tuning you can do, and it’s not much. As a result, a lot of people waste a
> lot of time. Every day.

Isn't that false? Aren't a lot of modern traffic lights equipped with
induction loops in the road surface [1], so they can detect if cars are
waiting?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_loop#Vehicle_detecti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_loop#Vehicle_detection)

~~~
jlarocco
It's important to safe guard how that data is used, but I'm not sure driving
on a public road counts as a private activity. It's already illegal to drive
an unregistered vehicle on a public road or to drive without the license plate
displayed.

~~~
eiaoa
> It's important to safe guard how that data is used, but I'm not sure driving
> on a public road counts as a private activity. It's already illegal to drive
> an unregistered vehicle on a public road or to drive without the license
> plate displayed.

Correct, but pervasive, automated surveillance and tracking has quite a
different quality than requiring identification that's always displayed but
rarely read. Just because some new practice can be analogized to an old one
doesn't mean it's the same.

------
cstross
Something the tech industry fails to notice is that cars are not the only road
users—-let alone the only ones that use traffic lights.

As a pedestrian (or, when I was younger, a cyclist), I relied on traffic
lights as much as (if not more than) pedestrian crossings to tell me when it
was safe to proceed. Removing lights and signage may seem like a "simplifying"
or "efficiency" measure to vehicle manufacturers, but it's creating a hostile
and/or dangerous environment for other classes of road user ... not all of
whom can afford, or can use, some variety of AR system to supplement their
merely human senses.

Yes, there's a role for V2V signaling: but as a supplement to—not a
replacement for—existing traffic control mechanisms.

~~~
CydeWeys
Seconded. I bike to work every day in Manhattan, and always see many other
cyclists, let alone the thousands of pedestrians. This system may work in a
sterile environment where the only people present are in vehicles, but what
about a lively multi-modal city? How do pedestrians and cyclists fit in here?

------
jrd259
Note also that the authors' long-term solution for non-motorists is for
_everyone_ to carry an "IoT" device broadcasting their presence. Who pays for
these? Note that every person needs one, including children and tourists. It
adds a grave threat to privacy: in order to simply cross a street, I must
agree to broadcast my whereabouts to the public. It also leads, inexorably, to
a legal regime where if I fail to carry the IoT broadcaster, and get hit by
car, it's my fault.

~~~
CydeWeys
Yes, it does seem ridiculously fine-tuned to favor automobiles at the expense
of everyone else. Despite the fact that many of our cities are completely
congested and are going the other way already: Increasing mass transit,
cycling, and walkability. Everyone using their own car simply doesn't scale
well.

------
takk309
Two things that I see as problems with this type of system:
pedestrians/nonmotorized users, and the need for 100% of vehicles to be on the
system. Starting with pedestrians, it is important to have adequate crossing
time for a pedestrian for obvious reasons. The current standard in the US is
to assume that the pedestrians are walking a 3.5 ft/s. This sounds slow but it
is meant to account for elderly/disabled individuals. Using this speed, a
pedestrian clearance interval is calculated. This value is commonly used as
the minimum green time for a signal phase that includes a pedestrian phase.
Even without a pedestrian call, pushing the button, this time is used. The
reasoning behind this is due to the possibility of a pedestrian crossing
without press the button first. This issue can likely be overcome through some
fancy algorithms and pedestrian detection. However, you really want your ped
detection to be perfect since one missed detection can easily result in a
fatality.

The second issue, 100% of vehicles on the system, is more insurmountable. How
many vehicles do you see on the road that are older than 5 years? 10 years? 20
years? Quite a few. Many of the people driving those cars fall into two
categories, those that can't afford a newer car or collectors. Those that
can't afford a newer car likely cannot afford to retrofit their existing car
with V2V hardware. The second group, collectors, likely don't want to install
aftermarket electronics into their vehicles. The presence of cars without the
necessary equipment may result in very severe consequences for the system.

My opinion on improving traffic flow through a network is that improvements to
a centralized monitoring system will work better and be more resilient to edge
cases. With a centralized system, it is easier to ensure that it is operating
as it was designed. If you have tens of thousands of individual systems all
trying to operate in concert, it could only take a few to cause havoc. Bad
actors and poorly operating units will happen.

------
cbhl
Peer-to-peer protocols work just fine, and sure, we could design protocols
that are resilient to adversaries (like the various iterations of bittorrent).

But client-server is so much simpler operationally with respect to NAT
traversal and CGNAT and IPv4/IPv6 and latency and other real-world networking
and compatibility concerns. So I expect a commercial enterprise building
"smart" or "self-driving" cars will instead just go for the tried-and-true
thing of cellular modems that phone home to a central server. (Or, SSH servers
exposed to the Internet, I guess, like Tesla did:
[https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376](https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376))
And if the server shuts down, then the devices become useless (like with so
many other smart devices).

If you want to get rid of traffic lights, what you want is a dedicated right
of way. It can have train tracks, or it can have asphalt (like transitways in
Mississauga or Ottawa, or conventional freeways, highways, or tollways).

~~~
hocuspocus
I used to work at a company that is very much involved in the field and you're
right. I don't know any car manufacturer (and we worked with nearly all of
them) that is interested in P2P. Even the ones that are willing to use and
invest in an open communication platform will keep full control of the car to
server communication, and proceed to share only a fraction of the collected
data.

------
adrianmonk
They say "completely distributed system" and "without a centralized control
mechanism", so I wonder if they've worked through all the consistency
questions (CAP theorem kind of stuff). I don't know how you safely deal with a
network partition.

Imagine one car approaches an intersection and there are no other cars
anywhere near. It gives itself a green and goes through the intersection
without stopping.

Now imagine the same situation except there are two cars headed toward the
same intersection at the same time, but neither one picks up the signal of the
other. They both believe they are the only car headed toward the intersection,
they both give themselves a green, and then they crash.

It seems like you either have to add some centralized infrastructure or accept
that you are only safe to the extent that your radios are reliable.

~~~
coldsauce
> accept that you are only safe to the extent that your radios are reliable.

Won't you need to have the same assumption if you had a centralized
infrastructure? Otherwise how would your car talk to the centralized system?

~~~
lbriner
No because a motor vehicle would have to establish a connection to the
centralized infrastructure in order to get a green light. If it can't, it
assumes a fault and acts accordingly. The problem above is that there might
not be another car so how do you detect the failure?

------
crankylinuxuser
Ok. Lets play.

[https://www.arrow.com/en/products/adalm-pluto/analog-
devices](https://www.arrow.com/en/products/adalm-pluto/analog-devices)

Take it from 300MHz-3.8GHz to 70MHz-6GHz

[https://www.rtl-sdr.com/adalm-pluto-sdr-hack-tune-70-mhz-
to-...](https://www.rtl-sdr.com/adalm-pluto-sdr-hack-tune-70-mhz-to-6-ghz-and-
gqrx-install/)

Buy some antennas for the freq's you want to RX/TX.

Sniff or investigate the protocol.

Cause wrecks and brake-checks and other bad things with cars.

I guarantee this will be as bad as ADS-B :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv1j3GbgLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv1j3GbgLk)

------
andys627
We would be healthier, happier, less harmful to environment, richer, have more
friends, be better connected to our communities, etc. if we built mobility
around walking, biking, transit, AND cars... not ONLY cars.

~~~
supertrope
Walking, biking, mixed user development, and mass transit aren't nearly as
marketable as a flashy consumer product.

We need to find a way to make car-optional transit profitable or socially
desired.

------
tener
I think this is a key paragraph:

> The concept of incomplete penetration of DSRC transceivers brings up one of
> the biggest potential obstacles to adoption of our VTL technology. Could it
> still work even if only a certain percentage of vehicles is equipped with
> DSRC? The answer is yes, provided that governments equip existing traffic
> signals with DSRC technology.

There is no way you can modify all cars on road to make them DSRC compliant
any time soon. OTOH making the traffic lights understand the system is very
practical and incremental way of improving the situation.

------
lifeisstillgood
_Buses and Coaches_ could reduce traffic jams and shorten commutes. There are
maybe a dozen easy plays any city can make, and dozens more harder ones, to
reduce traffic congestion long before anything like this reaches "safe enough
for streets".

And one would guess the minute this billion dollar investment works, it will
suffer the By-pass paradox and streets are back to the usual level.

(its been a week of traffic accidents and long long tailbacks in London, so i
am feeling bitter :-)

------
ElBarto
This is the sort of idea that looks great on paper and simulations but that
totally falls flat in the real world.

The system would require trusted communication.

The system would also have to cope with any number of vehicles not having this
feature or with broken/defective feature...

What's the fail safe solution? To rely on traffic lights and priority
markings.

------
sandworm101
Not going to happen. Not in our lifetimes. Human reactions times are not why
cars keep their distance from each other. Even with perfect communication,
perfect knowledge, a large number of cars that close together is extremely
dangerous. Any small fault, a squirrel running into the road, will cascade
into something major. All those little spaces between vehicles allow the
system to iron out such things without impacting everyone.

We could see small trains of autodrive vehicles tailgating each other on
highways, but not huge trains of random participants. The incremental
advantage is far outweighed by the associated risks.

What will acceptable de-confliction space be? Ten seconds? Five? One? If you
are a passenger in a car approaching an intersection, exactly how close do you
want to be to the truck about to t-bone you?

------
ummonk
We're still struggling to implement positive train control and they think we
can implement this en-masse?

------
nlh
Apologies if I missed this in the article, but my first (hacker) question is
how the algorithm handles a rogue actor trying to maximize its own efficiency
to the detriment of others.

Is this accounted for? I’m envisioning roaming packs of nerds with the digital
equivalent of the mythical Chrome Box...

------
jillesvangurp
If you can come up with some kind of standards for this, you could come up
with a hybrid scheme where there is also vehicle to infrastructure
communication. This would allow vehicles and infrastructure to do all sorts of
intelligent routing, scheduling and congestion control. Using a hybrid system
means that this can work even when most of the traffic is not able to
communicate yet and when most of the infrastructure is not yet ready for this
(i.e. right now).

For example, a vehicle equipped with this and with an intention to turn right
at a particular crossing could communicate that intention to that crossing
ahead of time to the controller that manages the traffic lights at the
crossing and communicate an ETA or even negotiate a time slot. The crossing
could than take this into account and schedule the light to be green for the
vehicle when it arrives or tell it to slow down slightly to match the next
possible green light to minimize congestion around the crossing.

This would allow infrastructure to start taking intelligent decisions based on
the traffic that is communicating to it. It would provide immediate incentives
for car owners to make sure their car is capable of participating. Even cars
that aren't participating could benefit indirectly from other cars reporting
their observations of other traffic (e.g. Tesla does a lot of object tracking)
or by simply following cars that are equipped.

You could add priorities to this as well where e.g. ambulances or other
emergency vehicles never encounter red lights and cars ahead are directed to
make room. You could also allow people to pay for upgrading their priority so
that they encounter less red lights and can get more reliable and faster ETA
to their destination.

------
WAthrowaway
We've come full circle back to CB radios. 10-4 good buddy

~~~
justtopost
Frankly, the ability to talk to those around us may go a long way to make us
more civil people on the road and to strangers in general. And lead to some
unique road rage of its own. I still use a cb and find it handy living off a
highway.

------
davidgh
This is a fascinating topic. I’m very curious to see how it evolves.

I’m trying to think about how V2V systems could improve traffic without
introducing a huge element of risk. As I think about drivers, they make
“offensive” and “defensive” moves all the time. An example of an offensive
move is to pull into an intersection to cross through it. An example of a
defensive move is to stop or slow your car when you see the path in front of
you is obstructed.

Humans convey their offensive intentions in cars all the time, to help others
execute defensive responses. When changing lanes, we can use our signal. When
two cars arrive at an intersection with a stop sign at the same time, one car
might slowly nudge their car forward (offensively), indicating to the other
car to wait (defensively).

Perhaps cars will broadcast “offensive” information to allow other cars to
respond “defensively” to improve traffic, but the lack of these offensive
messages (or even in the event of an incorrect or rogue messages), safety is
not compromised (although traffic efficiency would be diminished).

For example, if cars were traveling near to each other in adjacent lanes and
car A communicated its intention to merge into the lane occupied by car B, car
B could (defensively) make a small change in speed or change lanes to make
room to accommodate car A’s (offensive) attempt to change lanes.

In the event that car A broadcasts an “offensive” message incorrectly (or
fraudulently), the defensive response of car B does not jeopardize safety
(although the rogue message would reduce overall traffic efficiency). If car A
does not broadcast the offensive “lane change” message at all, car B should be
designed to prevent collision (if necessary, applying the brakes sharply, or
executing a quick maneuver to prevent collision). Traffic efficiency would be
reduced, but hopefully safety would not.

------
andrei_says_
It is easy to control the security of a traffic lights system.

It is near impossible to control all vehicles for the introduction of
malicious actors.

------
Rebelgecko
Based on the summary in the article, it seems like their algorithm is entirely
dependent on people behaving nicely. They don't seem to handle cases where
cars collude to vote for the "wrong" leader, or a leader that chooses to be
greedy and get themselves through the intersection faster.

------
blue4
There was a great idea from Audi designers where they said that light
communication should be enhanced and in the future would be used for deeper
level of communications. Perhaps, in this context it makes a lot of sense and
developing a beautiful system of communication through light would be used for
more than just auto, I always think how we've been sending radio waves and
other audio messages into space, but never heard about alternative
communications, such as light.

Also, the hardest part won't be the actual communication, it will be the
standards that have to implemented through all manufactures who don't want to
agree and potentially give up their advantages.

------
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Some kind of vehicle-to-vehicle standard should be made. I don't think the
first application will be intersections; that's really more suited for 'manual
exclusion' zones, which are a ways off.

But one really interesting application would be road-trains for freeways.
You'd cut down on drag significantly, and could probably make it work on
manual-driving roads with object/hazard communication and real-time agreement
on emergency maneuvers (e.g. every other vehicle swings out to the breakdown
lane, simultaneous braking, etc.).

Drag is ~2/3^rds of the energy loss of a big-rig on the highway, so imagine
the kind of range a battery electric truck could get in 'road train' mode.

~~~
pishpash
First app is much more likely to be road to vehicle comm, not vehicle to
vehicle, e.g. enforcing one-way streets, no turns, off limit areas, even
traffic routing or congestion pricing.

------
__initbrian__
What an intersection could look like:
[http://i.imgur.com/OMhCCI1.gifv](http://i.imgur.com/OMhCCI1.gifv)

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/5dervt/what_a_driverl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/5dervt/what_a_driverless_world_will_look_like/)

------
dsfyu404ed
This is pretty damn far-fetched. There's many lower hanging fruit that havne't
been picked yet and will be picked before stuff like this happens.

------
En_gr_Student
Humans are in the way.

There is an intermediate "rich" communication light-set that speaks more than
intentions, and more directions than backward.

If you go "no driver" then your market dies. It is going to be an ironic pain
for Detroit, one that ranks up there with having your company realtime video
your face for thought-crimes, when individual consumers don't buy cars that
don't come with a steering wheel.

------
parliament32
Although I'm sure we're heading in this direction eventually, it'll be
interesting to see what kinds of protections this system and others like it
have from "misbehaving" cars.

I imagine a "always try to give me the green light" patch will be created
almost immediately after this system starts being used in public.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
But if everyone installs the patch, the only way they'd get green lights
faster was if their 3rd party system was smarter... Which is a net win.
(Unless some people can't afford the 3rd party patch.)

------
gobengo
I was in Porto a few weeks ago for ngiforum.eu, and Prof Susana Sargento spoke
briefly there about her mesh research that has contributed to Veniam, a
company building vehicle-to-vehicle mesh tech (selling to cities I think?).
[https://veniam.com/](https://veniam.com/)

Worth following them and learning more about this.

------
mti27
This reminds me of a sci-fi story from a few years ago where people didn't
want to own cars, since one just showed up when you needed it due to a
combination of surveillance and fancy algorithms. Prediction:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw-
nvo4BzOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw-nvo4BzOM)

------
blendo
I think the author is perhaps putting the cart before the horse. They pre-
suppose widespread deployment of either DSRC, or Cellular V2X.

There is still debate as to which will win out
([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/business/vehicle-
communic...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/business/vehicle-
communications-standard.html)), but GM, Toyota, and Volkswagen seem committed
to DSRC. As they are the biggies, my bet is within 5 years most new cars, some
new pickup trucks, and some new delivery/heavy trucks will be using DSRC.

How useful will that be?

DSRC transmits a "Basic Safety Message" 10 times per second (range 1000
meters), containing velocity vector, pitch/roll/yaw vector, vehicle weight,
status ("braking", "skidding", etc) and, critically, position. Current GPS
(particularly in urban canyons) may only give 10m accuracy, or worse.

But if we could get 10cm accuracy (maybe with some kind of publicly deployed
differential gps?), then a whole set of advantages become apparent.

1) Your Heads-Up-Display could warn of a (DSRC-equipped) vehicle that's about
to blow through an approaching stop sign and will collide with your projected
position. And your auto-braking could be activated.

2) You could be warned on the freeway of a vehicle 5 cars ahead of you that
has just slammed on the brakes (because that vehicle just transmitted that
info).

3) Special lanes could be reserved for platooning, with cars separated by only
a meter or two (0.1-0.3s) rather than 2s. Voila -- much greater lane capacity.

4) If DSRC were cheap enough ($100-200), bicyclists and motorcyclists could
buy one, and make themselves much more visible to every DSRC-equipped cager.

5) And if really cheap, many pedestrians might carry them, safe in the
knowledge that if they step out into the street, the auto-braking cars will
pro-actively avoid them.

And _none_ of these features require any type of cameras, lidar, or other
(arguably problematic) self-driving technology. Heck, they don't even require
a map.

A final point about privacy -- DSRC was designed so the vehicle identifier
isn't anything traceable like VIN or license. Instead, the id is randomized
every few mintues (or at least according to
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fd03/f4c5f3128db5c08e5e92f2...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fd03/f4c5f3128db5c08e5e92f2d26b5f6f9aa485.pdf)
\-- I don't know how GM/Toyoto/VW have implemented it).

~~~
drmpeg
DSRC is under attack from the NCTA. They want the FCC to relinquish the DSRC
spectrum to WiFi.

[https://www.ncta.com/sites/default/files/2018-10/NCTA%20Fres...](https://www.ncta.com/sites/default/files/2018-10/NCTA%20Fresh%20Look%20ex%20parte%2010%2015%2018%20FINAL.pdf)

~~~
blendo
Cool. Cox/Comcast/Viacom/Charter/Showtime/Disney/Fox
([https://www.ncta.com/about-ncta](https://www.ncta.com/about-ncta)) vs
GM/Toyota/VW/wi-fi geeks. Grabbing popcorn for this one.

------
xte
Yeah, so we replace a simple stuff for a complicated and uncertainly one, nice
classic modern move... Also I suppose humans must be wearing some
communication devices also... Do not make be vulgar about the kind of device
and placement...

IMVHO V2V coms are good ADDITION, but only addition, no more.

------
sokoloff
> Even in a regime mandating DSRC transceivers for all cars and trucks

...which will _never_ happen...

------
zeristor
Increase capacity, and you’ll increase demand. I imagine traffic is limited
only by the tolerance for a certain delay.

Although I only have a rough idea what I’m talking about, I should delve
deeper to be more quantative.

------
peterwwillis
Commutes could also be shortened by removing cars from the road.

------
mtgx
...Get cars hacked.

------
rhacker
This is going to be like ipv6, everyone can do it except we don't know for
sure if that's true, so we won't.

------
jerkstate
this is the aspect of self-driving cars I've been most excited about for a
while. But what's the incentive for any car to become the "leader" and take
the VTL? surely people will hack this so that their car never does this. This
might be a good application of a public ledger.

~~~
fwip
"Let's put self-driving cars on the blockchain."

Generally, I'd hope that my request to cross an intersection is confirmed in
fewer than 10 minutes.

------
dschep
So how does this work with non-car vehicles? Bikes. Scoots. Pedicabs. etc.

------
etimberg
Could be interesting as long as this stuff is encrypted properly.

------
gameswithgo
Never trust the client.

------
tasty_freeze
(US citizen here)

I can foresee the day when this communistic approach to traffic management
will be unacceptable, and the patriotic solution is to let the market decide.
Whomever is willing to pay the most gets to run all the intersections, while
poorer people get to use them when there aren't any richer people in the
vicinity. Because the free market always finds the optimal solution.

