A Car Revolution

Oh man, the nerd in me is about to come out.

You may have recently seen a commercial for a new Mercedes featuring a cruise control that will brake for you! Distronic Plus Adaptable Cruise Control will allow your car to move with traffic without having to use your right foot. It’s pretty interesting. But I still wonder if it would ever be possible for cars to brake on their own, without having to be put on cruise control…

Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) is a developing technology that allows cars to communicate with other cars and with road side infrastructure. The goal of this technology is to create a network of cars on the roadways and use that network and communication ability to prevent accidents. In theory, each car would have a device that uses waves in the 5.850-5.925 GHz band, comparable to radar detectors, to communicate with each other. Basically, if a driver on the other side of the median has fallen asleep and is headed directly for your car, the DSRC device in our car will tell you to stop immediately, avoiding the head on collision.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted DSRC in 2003 and says in regards to it that “It can save lives by warning drivers of an impending dangerous condition or event in time to take corrective or evasive actions.”

This theoretical network of cars would be the warning side, to brake or change lanes or dodge an oncoming car. However, it will not actually brake for you. Now they need to merge this DSRC technology with an auto braking system, like Mercedes’, to make a super car that is un-wreckable.