Cars will Talk to Road, to Each Other & to Drivers

On the brave new highways of the not-so-distant future, cars will talk to the roads, to each other and to drivers to warn them of everything from an oncoming Mack truck to a pothole.

The promise of "intelligent transportation," as it's come to be known, has all the ring of science fiction. In the film "Minority Report," Tom Cruise's character flees authorities in air cars that travel at high speeds just inches apart.

While flying cars may be a ways off, technology already exists for safe bumper-to-bumper traffic. Fueled by the wireless revolution, global positioning systems and ever more powerful microchips, today's ready-for-market cars now have the ability to "see" each other and even make corrections. True believers say the day when cars drive themselves could come as early as 2020.

Such concepts will on display all week in San Francisco, where the Moscone Center is hosting the 12th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems. The event is expected to draw more than 6,000 people, including a half dozen foreign transportation ministers.

One of the vendors is General Motors, which is showing off its collision-avoidance cars at SBC Park's parking lot. Wireless signals in the small fleet of Cadillacs allow each car to locate one another. When they get too close, instrument lights and a jiggly seat warn the driver.

On a recent test drive, it worked like this: If an oncoming car is hovering in the driver's blind spot or zooms up in the lane over, yellow warning icons appear in the side view mirror. If the driver happens to be signaling to merge, say, to the right, the seat vibrates the driver's right leg.

Nothing stops the particularly inept driver from ignoring the mirror or the jiggle to smash a car alongside.

The seat vibrates both legs if the driver tailgates too closely. Meanwhile, a small display above the steering wheel shows a car icon that turns from green to yellow to red depending on how close the two cars get. The car in front flashes its taillights. If the tailgating driver is completely inattentive, or has a death wish, GM's cars apply a sharp emergency brake.

The system works safely even at 75 mph. In our test, we found at 30 mph that experienced drivers tended to brake before the car forced the issue.

Sound expensive? It's not, said GM engineer Donald Grimm. He guessed that basic plug-in systems, without seat vibrators or auto- brakes, could be added to old cars for around $100 to $200, raising the possibility that insurance companies might some day pay the cost, in the same way they reduced premiums for cars with back- window brake lights.

Grimm, and other auto designers say technology is being developed for cars to take over the steering, too, to avoid crashes in a country where more die on highways every month than died on 9/11 and where there are 800,000 side-panel collisions a year.

The truth is that human acceptance slows the technology.

Cruise control has been around since the 1970s. BART has been driving trains automatically for 30 years, and since the mid-1990s most jumbo jets have landed themselves.

"The original intent at BART was driverless trains," said spokesman Linton Johnson, acknowledging that train operators are there to reassure the public and to keep an eye out for unforeseen problems. But electric relays, using 50-year-old technology, space the trains and adjust their speeds, not drivers.

Newer technology has made computerized airplane landings routine.

"If you have a perfect landing, the pilot didn't land it. The computer did," said Ron Wilson, an aviation consultant to ABC-TV and a veteran pilot. He explained that the CAT-III landing system continually beams signals between the cockpit and landing strip to calculate time and distance.

"The yoke moves, the wheel moves, the rudder pedal moves all by itself. It's like a ghost is moving them and flying the plane," Wilson said.

Safety features in cars are just the start. Another firm, Chicago- based Navteq is demonstrating its mapping system, which over a wireless system tells cars of speed limits, upcoming hazards, sporting events, available parking, patches of black ice or rain and even potholes and cool restaurants.

Sensors in new cars such as BMW can calculate road conditions. Then a network of such cars can tell each other what they've seen.