We Interrupt This Important Safety Message To Bring You A Cute Puppy Video
Story Highlights
Forbes.com reports asks:
What’s better for society: enabling cars of the future to drive themselves or ensuring that data-hungry businesses and consumers can access the Web anytime, anywhere?
That’s the crux of an interesting fight taking place in Washington over whether a valuable set of digital airwaves reserved for connected cars should be freed up to give consumers more access to Web data and video.
Automakers plan to use the spectrum, set aside in 1991, to deploy sophisticated crash-avoidance systems that they say will save thousands of lives and reduce congestion in increasingly crowded cities. Using short-wave signals, vehicles will be able to send and receive electronic data messages about their location, speed and direction of travel. They can also talk to highway sensors and traffic lights to know when a light will turn red, whether there’s a sharp curve ahead and other surface conditions. All of that data can be integrated with advanced safety systems to issue driver warnings and even take evasive action, if needed.
