Much of a car’s interaction with the world around it is still a very stand-alone, analog experience, regardless of whether said car has a human driver or a self-driving computer system. Mark I eyeballs or equivalent computer-connected sensors perceive the world, including road markings, traffic signs and the locations of other road traffic. This information is processed and the car’s speed and trajectory are adjusted to ideally follow the traffic rules and avoid unpleasant conversations with police officers, insurance companies, and/or worse.
An idea that has been kicked around for a few years now has been to use wireless communication between cars and their environment to present this information more directly, including road and traffic conditions, independent from signs placed near or on the road. It would also enable vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V), which somewhat like the transponders in airplanes would give cars and other vehicles awareness of where other traffic is hanging out. Other than V2V, Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) would also include communication regarding infrastructure (V2I), pedestrians (V2P) and an expansive vehicle-to-network (V2N) that gives off strong Ghost in the Shell vibes.
Is this is the future of road traffic? The US Department of Transport (DOT) seems to think that its deployment will be a good thing, but V2X has been stuck in regulatory hurdles. This may now change, with the DOT releasing a roadmap for its deployment.
CB Radio On Steroids
No doubt many of us have used or are aware of the existence of Citizens Band radio (CB for short), which is a radio system operating around the 27 MHz band, first popularized in the US during the 1950s and gaining world-wide popularity during the 1970. It is an early example of an ubiquitous communication system that was, and is, used both by citizens at home and installed in just about any type of vehicle and boat. For truckers in particular it provides a means to obtain constant updates on road conditions, as well as for truck-to-truck communications should the need arise.
Over the years CB has become less relevant to the average citizen, who these days is equipped with a smartphone and drives a vehicle that has more computing power and communication options than the Space Shuttle. While connected to the internet, they can get route updates, warnings about road condition and construction, etc. delivered to various apps on the smartphone, to the infotainment system, a dedicated satnav device and so on. Yet the concept remains of being tied into some form of communication network that provides information that would otherwise be hard to come by.
Meanwhile features such as cruise control and collision avoidance systems (CAS) keep tabs on what is going on around the vehicle and any potential traffic rule violations to some extent. The number and types of CAS and other forms of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) in modern cars keep increasing, using everything from LIDAR and cameras to millimeter-wave radar systems to prevent collisions, keep the car in the current lane, detect braking cars ahead and integrate data obtained via a data link on upcoming traffic lights and other notable features long before they become visible.
With such a long list of safety features and data links a part of an increasing number of vehicles on the road, it raises the question of whether this V2X deployment would do more than to standardize and expand upon much of the technology that is already out and about on the roads today.
Defining V2X
As with many marketing-buzzword-bingo-laden terms, it is probably a good idea to take a look at the overview of the National V2X Deployment Plan (PDF) which the US DOT recently released. The title for the document makes it clear that the primary consideration is that of safety, specifically increasing road safety by preventing collisions and with it the deaths and injuries that occur on US roads every year. Motor vehicle fatalities on US roads hit 42,512 deaths in 2022, or 12.76 per 100,000 inhabitants. More worryingly is an increase in pedestrian and bicycle fatalities, with 81% more pedestrians dying in 2022 compared to 2013.
So how would V2X prevent these fatalities? If we scroll down to page 11 of the DOT document to the actual roadmap, we can see that for the period of 2024 – 2028 the short-term goals are to deploy V2X on 20% of national highways and have the top 75 US metro areas equip 25% of their intersections with the technology. For vehicles, two manufacturers would commit to producing vehicles capable of using the selected 5.895 – 5.925 GHz band by the 2028 model year. From that period the V2X system would be expanded to cover more of the highways and intersections.
If we consult the referenced ITS America National V2X Deployment Plan which was published in Aril of 2023, we can get a bit more background information. ITS America is a collaboration of infrastructure owners and operators (IOO) and the aforementioned OEMs. The V2X-enabled cars would have 5.9 GHz-enabled radios, which communicate with road-side units (RSU) to exchange relevant information, building upon the knowledge gained so far from Cellular-V2X (C-V2X) trials.
The RSUs would be placed at intersections, where it could eliminate many crashes while also providing the driver with information on when a traffic light will turn green and prevent the running of red lights. In addition, V2X-enabled cars would also be able to communicate with V2X-enabled bicyclists, pedestrians and similar, who would also have a V2X-enabled device on their person or bike. This would then communicate with the vehicles ADAS, ideally preventing collisions between the vehicle and these much squishier traffic participants. These personal V2X devices could be integrated into smartphones at some point, for example.
Casualties Versus Security
On one hand it sounds wonderful if cars and trucks can effectively no longer hit pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, etc. because of V2X-ADAS integration, but there are some concerns regarding privacy and security. There is the obvious worry about spoofed V2X messages that might mess with traffic, or even cause the very casualties that it sought to avoid. To this end the DOT hosts the ITS Cybersecurity Research Program, which among other things is working on ensuring trusted communications between vehicles, infrastructure and other parties in a V2X-enabled system.
This would seem to involve some secure way to signing messages, while guaranteeing some level of anonymity. The former would seem to be standard secure communication practice, while the latter makes sense when the goal of V2X vis-à-vis other traffic participants is to merely avoid becoming kinetically intimate. In order to avoid said collision, you only need need to know where the vehicle, bike or pedestrian in question is roughly located before any onboard sensors can detect it.
Presumably this might include common scenarios such as a person running out from behind a row of parked cars into traffic, or another car popping out from a narrow side street in one of those harrowingly picturesque ancient city centers. The scenarios referenced in the documents are left turns and intersection crossings, but presumably one could come up with many more scenarios.
Implementation-Dependent
To circle back to the question asked at the beginning, of whether V2X is the future of road traffic, it’s hard to give a definitive answer here. Although the benefits are stark, and the technologies required neither new nor bleeding edge, one only has to look at the sometimes outright hostility that for example battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) as well as self-driving cars receive. Even though BEVs are over a century old by now, and self-driving cars like those from Alphabet’s Waymo are demonstrating clearly superior incidents-per-kilometer statistics than human drivers, bias persists.
If V2X wants to succeed, it should be implemented and handled in a way that works with these biases, rather than against them. If lives are saved due V2X-enabled cars with a human driver pulling off a superhuman collision avoidance maneuver, or a child not run over after running into traffic because the V2X-enabled truck already stopped before the child came into view, then those are convincing arguments.
Perhaps V2X will have an easier time here than self-driving cars and BEVs, as it does not seek to change or replace anything, no more than that ADAS features in today’s cars do. It might even be quite realistic to retrofit V2X into existing vehicles, significantly promoting kinetic hesitancy in close traffic situations, but these are all things that we will have to wait and see what happens.
It’s weird. To me a car always seemed to represent a certain freedom and independance, but everybody just lets cars become part of some very icky total tracking and control system from the ‘authorites’ and car companies and advertisers and seem to not put up too much of a fight.
They don’t even remove stuff that they could theoretically remove.
There are still cars with no electronics, you just need to know where to look. Two years ago I bought 1998 Daewoo Lublin with absolutely classic Andoria 4C90 diesel engine. It’s non-turbo version so with proper maintenace it should last for literaly decades. I’m using it as my daily driver and honestly it’s much better than 2002 Kia Sportage I had before. What a goshdarn rustbucket it was. I had to scrap it because it would not pass inspection anymore due to corrosion.
If you’re worried about tracking, unfortunately your old car won’t save you. With license plate readers becoming more common there’s no escape. Look up Flock LPR for one example.
I think if your point is “you can still buy a car with no electronics, you just need to buy something from 26 years ago” you’re making the original poster’s point.
Yeah, if I as an individual really want to drive a car unmodified from the 1970s it is a possibility (and I do)… thus far. That’s not a solution at scale though, and will obviously diminish with time.
Your car is still tracked. See the widespread deployment of Flock cameras everywhere…its ok though because the government isn’t directly spying on you, they simply buy the data from Flock with no warrant needed.
A muddy road can fix that!
Only for dumb automated systems. And if your license plate can’t be read, you’re inviting scrutiny from more intelligent systems.
The autistic tech minmaxers are EXTREMELY disturbed by that possibility of human agency and organic variability. It’s pathological. Their brains are messed up yet they perceive that mess as superiority. And they perceive the act of enforcing their worldview on others as empathy. It’s a nightmarish, incredibly dangerous personality type. And the worst part is they think they are the good people
It’s just a form of moral entrepreneurship. People are pushing diminishing returns in safety or environmentalism, or social policy, “anti-bullying” etc, regardless of the resulting costs and harm, for the purpose of elevating their own status and power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_entrepreneur
They’re selling good moral. The more concern they can raise, the more people take their side on matters in general, even if they don’t exactly achieve what appears to be the primary goal. Often the goal is fleeting and impossible anyways, so you can always keep fighting and rallying people for the purposes of your real motives.
In the end, the motive doesn’t even need to be very sinister. Just the usual, people trying to justify their jobs, because bureaucrats got hired to do bureaucracy and researchers got hired to do research. If there’s no immediate and proper reason for these people to get paid, they will invent one, such as “solving car crashes”, because it’s such an easy appeal to make. Wouldn’t you want nobody to ever die in traffic accidents? No? Then you’re a bad person.
If you think that’s what autism is, you have no idea what you’re talking about and you’re perpetuating a hateful false stereotype that has no place here. It’s been proven that, generally speaking, to the extent that there is trouble with empathy and recognizing the humanity of others, it goes in both directions across the divide between autistic and non-autistic people. Furthermore, they’re not generally the ones to try and control others by shaping society to conform to their world views and have not (if for no other reason than numbers) pathologized those with different mental characteristics.
Your problem with tech-bros is just a problem with fanboys, or those who’ve got a tribal loyalty or reverence for tech, who can be of any
There is a type of person who doesn’t really consider other people to have agency until they’re reminded of it. They’re having trouble with the “theory of mind”, which is the ability to intuitively ascribe internal states to other people and recognize that they differ from one’s own. It’s this type of person who gets “good ideas” and automatically assumes that other people will agree, and if not then the other person is either stupid or evil because they should obviously recognize the brilliance of the idea but choose to go against it. Another curious feature is that they can change their minds to the complete opposite and never recognize the contradiction, because their past self is also an “other mind” that is no longer recognized – so they tend to ignore the hypocrisy of their actions and act inconsistently.
That’s not autism per se, but this kind of behavior is a feature of the particular problems or deficiencies that is common to people on the autism spectrum. For example, a person might start talking to you like you understand quantum mechanics, and when you indicate that you have no idea what they’re talking about, they start to lecture the point as if you were a child and not simply disinterested in the topic.
A concrete example of the effect is the Sally–Anne test, or the false belief test, where children are put to predict what another person would do. The child knows what is happening, while the other person is ignorant about some difference.
80% of normal children and children with other impairments make the correct prediction that “Sally” will be ignorant, while only 20% of autistic children get it right – instead they assume “Sally” knows whatever they themselves know.
It seems to indicate that autistic children take longer to develop a theory of other minds. It’s not unreasonable to assume that some people – autistic or otherwise – never fully develop it and instead simply learn to make the correct predictions case-by-case from experience.
Oh, I’d be totally willing to say that it’s a common feature of autism to have a harder time forming a theory minds WHEN we account for the implications of the fact that most minds are non-autistic. It’s proven there’s a significant mutual incompatibility going on. Non-autistic people have been shown to have just as hard of a time understanding an autistic person, too, while each group can usually figure their own members out better. Since the autistic kids have a wider gap to bridge before they can connect with most people, we say they’re all bad at jumping gaps instead of recognizing that non-autistic kids would have a hard time in an autistic world too. And it stunts someone’s mental growth not to be able to learn what everyone else learns by interacting with each other as kids, and that can sometimes be the true reason for someone’s problems rather than their abilities being directly impacted. Not to say that there aren’t legitimately inherent negative aspects to some parts of what we call autism, just that many of them are misunderstood and are only problems because our society doesn’t work in a compatible way. Kind of like being left handed in a world where tools are all right handed, only much bigger in impact.
In your QM example, imagine a mirror universe where people take turns talking about things they’re passionate about as a way of bonding, regardless whether the other understands much about it. In that context, someone indicating they don’t understand isn’t enough, it has to be an actual refusal to participate, and in this mirror universe it’s possible (I’m not sure on this point) that it’s a faux pas not to participate, just like if you had coldly shot someone down when they tried to engage you with small talk.
I’m not so sure on the sally-anne test; I suspect given the historical track record of getting things wrong about autism, that each autistic kid that failed the test has a much higher liklihood to have just not been on the same page about what was happening and what they were being asked, rather than actually not being able to understand that one person can know different things than another.
It’s literally not autism, just stop there. You are ranting about sociopathic interactions that are almost entirely economic problems and the people that leverage them the most simply don’t pay attention to any outcome other than their such portfolio. If you want to say business stuff be conducted ethically, that’s what regulations are for
You know that most of that tracking is by business, not government right? The government wants to know how roads are used, businesses want to get as much insurance and subscription money out of you as possible. Besides, it would be more evident to replace half this traffic with public transit, but vested interests want your money.
I feel as though this is kind of a trap. I’d like to put one of these systems on whatever abribrary vehicle I happen to have on hand (onewheel for instance) and set it to “priority vehicle” so that I can just blithely ride anywhere and all the cars will stop for me.
But then it would need to be open source or at least have API’s available, and who knows what manner of hacking wonders would ensue.
Maybe if they are smart they will at least have modules you can put on your vehicle (bicycle for instance) that would allow it to be dealt with in traffic.
But then why not put one on a drone and have all manner of fun?
Likely this will be a thickly walled garden
Sounds a bit Orwellian to me.
V2X isn’t going to prevent hits on cyclists and pedestrians unless they too are wired up.
The reality is the V2X offer nothing that independent-driving doesn’t and opens up a whole bad world of surveillance and control by bad actors. At crazy high cost too.
Government doesn’t really know what it’s doing and should just let private actors work this out and step in only when a regulating hand is necessary.
It’s not going to work in any organic reality with realistic variability unless they pretty much engineer it to be effectively on rails (but 150x more expensive than a railway). This is pure grant money/VC sop, it is guaranteed to soak up hundreds of billions and produce nothing usable for generations. Great industry to get into if you can get the work
Also how does somebody who doesn’t know what they are doing know when a regulating hand is necessary? Or how to design those regulations? Makes no sense
When problems arise, they will become apparent. Trying to create regulations without information is blind and invites regulatory capture where the corporations pressure the government to create regulations that benefit their business needs first and don’t solve any actual problems.
Maybe they’ll shift liability to the victim if they’re not also using V2X… yay…
With Teslas getting more common than Toyotas in my neck of the woods, I keep wondering if the cars all talk to each other. I think Tesla (or any other popular brand) could implement a commercial IOT mesh network like Amazon Sidewalk with pretty good coverage. With store-and-forward might even work for more rural areas as long as there’s a somewhat busy road nearby.
I’m going to keep my 2013 Prius running for as long as possible. It has ABS and a back-up camera. That’s enough gadgetry for me, as I do not believe in being a distracted driver. Oh, and V2X security will likely use a hash of the VIN+date-time-group as the “encryption” key for all messages.
Is there any new car being made that doesn’t have any connectivity functionality at all, beyond the replaceable stereo unit?
I’m not allergic to microchips per se, just connectivity; and the boomer solution of “just keep running from the problem by driving older cars, hoping you die before the last of those cars do, and then it’s your grandkids’ problem” is a nonstarter; I’d prefer to vote with my wallet for whatever puny difference that makes.
I thought Dacia Duster, but nope. Even the most basic version (available only with 1.0L lawnmower engine 🤡) comes with some stupid touch-based “media centre”.
UAZ Hunter also comes to mind. In fact just a few years ago I had cash saved for it and was considering trip to either Minsk or Kaliningrad to buy a brand new one from the dealership. Luckily I put it on hold as there were more pressing issues to deal with. After “2022 incident” and resulting sanctions, border closings, price hikes etc. it would be a pain to buy proper spare parts in EU.
The Hunter reminds me of my (long gone) Suzuki Sidekick!
https://www.uaz.ru/en/cars/hunter
Or we could implement performance driver training and testing that works on every motor vehicle everywhere all the time. Eight hours every four years on a track to keep my license? Sign me up!
Used to be an instructor at a car club that offered training to regular Jills and Joes – not racers. Not only were our students stunned by what their cars could do, they were terrified, too frightened to use the built in capabilities. By this I mean they were truly worried they would break their cars if they “turned that hard, or stopped that hard”. Kinda makes me think at least some accidents could be avoided if drivers just used maximum brakes, turned harder, looked ahead further, that kind of stuff.
Panic stopping practice from 40mph was probably the neatest to watch from the right seat. Drill was “Drive 40mph straight toward that cone, Max brake at the last possible moment.” We didn’t tell them when to brake. They either were well short or very long at first and by the end of the day – within a few feet of the cone. And never broke their cars. Adding in a lane change at beginning and then the end made it harder but very relevant to real world where you can move under braking. It’s not F1 after all.
Very rewarding experience. Not sure if we prevented any accidents with that training but I know we reduced the stress levels and increased the capability of the students.
10 out of 10 recommend performance driver training if you have the time. Costs less than an insurance deductible at commercial joints and free or nearly free at some local car clubs. Don’t have a myocardial infarction and it’ll be a blast!
I was once an EMT present as part of an ambulance crew attending an executive chauffeurs driving school (Bill Scott Racing Team) for those that drive for the elite. It was cool to watch and I picked up how to do J turns and Street-L’s It was cool to watch and I picked up how to do J-turns and street L’s along with hard-braking. Of course the 20 year-old me “had” to try it.
I took an eight-day “offensive driving” course near Quantico at the request of my boss at the security company because he wanted to expand into executive protection. I was a supervisor and he wanted me to evaluate the course to see if it was worth it, me having experience in the SCCA in my youth. Driving around a parking lot in Trans Am’s, Caprice’s, and a limo. All kinds of evasion and “contact” maneuvers. Lots of fun and an education I will never forget, but putting out the cost of the course, lodging and per diem in the DC area, and paying our people for their time was just too much for his tastes. Got to show him some of the stuff I learned late at night in the mall parking lot in his Porsche, though :)
When I lived in Colorado, I heard of a company that had a driving school in the wintertime on a frozen lake. People would learn how to control their (own) cars on glare ice.
I wish I had pursued the opportunity.
When i was in driving school, it was a requirement to go to a track like that. Wasn’t a frozen lake thought, it was a specially built track.
Been waiting for the official plan on V2I and V2V communication. While focused on safer, more efficient transport, the infrastructure should be able to address some of the shortcomings of autonomous driving systems. With real-time communication to intersections and each other cars, real-time alerts, such as detecting pedestrians or vehicles running red lights are possible. In 10 years, 75% of intersections are expected to have V2X.
While I don’t see regulations for car owners, the govt will be able to encourage car maker implementation and by providing funds for local projects.
If V2V communication doesn’t allow me to tell another driver to (&^#^&)_&^%#$#!
then I don’t want it.
You need LED message boards in your windows that work with dictation. (￣ー￣ )
I do have an LED message board that a former workplace discarded.
But it manufacturer will not supply the software without a $ub$cription.
B^(
Mandate on-road retesting of drivers periodically to help curb bad habits.
Either that or have every insurer mandate IVMS systems in their client’s vehicles.
Money talks and privacy suffers, so the second seems more likely.
The UK doesn’t have enough driving test examiners to cope with the number of new drivers, it would take decades to build up enough capacity to regularly re-examine all drivers. It would be largely ineffective anyway, any experienced driver can fake being a perfect driver for 90 minutes. The bad habits: speeding, tailgating, aggression, excessive braking, etc., etc. are all easy to hide for a while, especially when you’re not actually travelling to a destination.
I don’t love the idea of insurers “analysing” their customers’ driving and finding reasons to inflate their own prices either though. The only thing I trust insurers to do is maximise profit for themselves.
Sounds like 1984 on steroids.
I can picture in 20 years time a V2P enabled phone found in the desert near some bones.
And a cop asking for a last seen on network metadata to work out when the battery ran out. A trace back to where the V2P equivalent of the mobile phones IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number was seen 75% of the time – It is going to be work and home of the person who owned it. Then running trace back on all automobiles seen at two of the three locations a month prior to the battery dying. It may sounds far fetched, but you can be damn sure that is how the data will eventually be used. But the data will not just be used by the police retroactively, it will be anyone who can gain access to the system in realtime.
Why not use the cellular network instead of some new radio? People are already wire up with it now, and the majority of cars will have cellular connections long before a majority has this new 5GHz radio.
A couple of reasons I can think of:
Local radio enforces that whoever is talking to you is actually near you.
Cellular connections are not available everywhere.
Cellular connection would force the creation of a massive computer system that knows where every vehicle is in real time.
This system exists here in Japan already.
My car is one model before it was offered for this car (2019 Toyota Noah)
It’s still being rolled out so it’s only really useful around the larger intersections in major cities (read ‘Tokyo’).
Notifications and warnings will pop up on the small display on the dashboard that is usually used for the aircon display, clock, and hybrid system status etc.
It’ll hop the signal from an emergency vehicle to car to car to tell you that it is approaching and where from. (Although ambulances yell at you through an onboard PA system already, and strictly will not exceed the speed limit, even with the victim of a political assassination in the back…. )
At certain traffic lights, the system has cameras that monitor traffic movements to tell you to watch out for oncoming traffic if you are turning from behind a truck etc.
Police can also set up a broadcast for broken down vehicles or other road hazards while they are in attendance.
I have no idea how the system works beyond the user friendly sales brochure though.
I think the biggest issue with this technology is the uncertainty of pedestrians and the randomness of some motorcycles and bicycles not following traffic rules, which could lead to sudden stops or collisions.
We have enough problems with smart cars already!
And smart phones, smart TVs, smart homes…
No thank you too Orwellian for my tastes.