

Potholes abound on the road to car-to-car communication - leoedin
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/potholes-abound-on-the-road-to-car-to-car-communication/

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leoedin
Not mentioned in the article, but perhaps a relevent comment on the privacy
concerns: In the UK at least, the government have already installed license-
plate tracking cameras on overpasses on almost every major road in the
country. Sniffing the RF V2V data wouldn't really reveal much more (apart from
speed).

I suspect that it would be politically unacceptable to routinely prosecute for
speeding offences that were identified with this data (although perhaps there
would be a grey area when very high speeds were identified).

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resemc
>I suspect that it would be politically unacceptable to routinely prosecute
for speeding offences that were identified with this data

Authorities issue speeding citations to fast drivers all the time based on
toll road time-stamps.

You shouldn't be surprised about the government's actions when there's a
windfall at stake.

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justincormack
No mention of the impact to bicycles and pedestrians if people start to rely
on these systems. Installing these on bikes might help a lot, making them more
equal.

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toomuchtodo
It would bring surface transportation up to par with sea (AIS) and air (ADS-B)
transport.

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nlh
My first thoughts after reading the NTSB press release:

* Police are going to love this. Why sit in your cruiser and fire a radar/laser gun (which requires aim, patience, concentration , and a is error-prone) when you can just sit back and let the cars themselves tell you when they're speeding. For the same reason, once people figure it out, consumers are going to hate this.

* Hacks will abound - some good, some bad (you get to apply the labels you want ;) For example, I can imagine a car being hacked to report 99mph when going through intersections so everyone else stays out of the way, but if a police officer is nearby (thank you, Waze), 55 allllll the way home.

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wffurr
"But what worries some is that the system could be used to target “bad actors”
on the highways, as they were referred to in a recent Government
Accountability Office (GAO) report. Cars may become informants on drivers who
speed or drive erratically"

This is a feature, not a bug. Cars should become informants on dangerous
drivers.

~~~
tantalor

            INT.  CAB - NIGHT
    
            Korben tries to control his car, reeling from the impact.
    
    						VOICE (O.S.)
    				You have just had an accident.
    				Seven points have been temporarily
    				removed...
    
            Korben manages to stop his cab, pulls over to the side.
    
    						VOICE / KORBEN
    				You have one point left on your license.
    				Have a good day.

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bliti
I'm working on a similar system. The impact this will have on the tech
industry is potentially huge. Imagine your mobile device pairing with cars.
All of your preferences are automatically uploaded to the vehicle. Including
predetermined destinations that you might have already defined before leaving.
As you move down the road, the applications you have installed on your mobile
device will give you data regarding the surroundings. Yes, it will probably
contain advertisements, but it will also contain valuable information about
the area.

I know that privacy is a concern (which is shared among all). It is the
biggest challenge faced at the moment. Implementation is heavily dependent on
third party systems over which we don't have any controls.

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sbierwagen
V2V is a great idea, maybe the equal of airbags, or ABS. But if I can't
actually trust the government to _implement_ it, well...

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viraptor
In this case I trust the government to implement it more than I trust the
world to never create a tiny, throwable "I'm going straight in your direction
at 200mph" beacons. Unfortunately that's just a question of time.

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sbierwagen
Encrypt transmissions with NTSB provided secret keys.

In that case, the point of least resistance moves to spoofing the
accelerometer readings...

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viraptor
Yeah... encrypt the transmission with a secret key that is embedded in every
public car. That will stop it being reused! Like CSS, bluray and other DRM
solutions.

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deletes
There is a argument against such help, because the drivers will learn to rely
solely on the warnings and stop properly monitoring the road. As soon as the
system fails, accidents will start to happen.

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dyselon
Accidents already happen, and frequently. The question is "will these systems
fail enough such accidents happen more often than they do now?"

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deletes
That is different from my experience. If an automatic system that replaces a
human is adopted, it has to be almost perfect in the eyes of the public and
regulators. For example; plane autopilot is more reliable that the pilot, yet
we still have them( pilots ).

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fancyketchup
Yes, and autopilots are absolutely terrible at dealing with unexpected events.
See: UA232, BA38, US1549, AC143. In each of those accidents, passengers
survived who would have died in the hands of an autopilot.

1) In the BA case, the autopilot blindly commanded full thrust and then
pitched up in spite of decreasing airspeed. Humans correctly determined that
the engines were not producing thrust and elected to make an off-runway
landing instead of stalling the plane into airport-adjacent houses.

2) In the UA case, an engine failure disabled all three hydraulic systems,
leaving the plane without primary flight controls. The autopilot had no
provision to command differential thrust from the two working engines, and
would have driven the plane into the ground.

3) In the AC case, humans flew the plane at best L/D after running out of
fuel, which enabled the airplane to land at a closed airport (any airport
database would have told the autopilot it couldn't land there).

4) In the US case, humans determined that making an airport landing would be
impossible and elected to land the airplane on the Hudson river, which has
(and never will have) a published approach procedure.

Please explain how you expect autopilot programmers to anticipate these
scenarios and correctly chose a solution.

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deletes
We can't. Thank you for making my original point, which was that human drivers
are very hard to replace.

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err4nt
But wouldn't this turn every vehicle into a moving GPS beacon for drone
strikes?

