Now your car can be cleverer than you. Nissan is hoping to commercialize their groundbreaking “Intelligent Transportation System” in 2010 and are starting by a 30- month experimental stage in Tokyo involving 10,000 drivers on October 1st.
The new system sends wireless messages by antenna to passing cars with voice messages from other cars and roadside optical beacons. These messages are aloong the lines of: “School ahead- Watch your speed!” or “Car approaching from left”.
Although the system seems to be a highly workable one in Japan, where over 50% cars are already equipped with navigational gadgets, the questions remains whether such a high-tech system could work in Europe or the US where a mere 10% of cars are equipped in this capacity – let alone developing countries, where old jalopies are more the norm.
The system though has a lot of very useful and perhaps life-saving functions, such as a warning that tells you if there is a speeding car ahead at a blind intersections, and a quick route finder which tells you the quickest way to your destination through probe data collected from mobile phones.
