Flutterby™! : NTSB pushing V2V

NTSB is smoking crack: Computer World: Feds want cars to talk to each other, riffing on this PDF report which pushes in its findings for:

Connected vehicle technology: Effective countermeasures are needed to assist in preventing intersection crashes—for example, systems such as connected vehicle technology could have provided an active warning to the school bus driver of the approaching truck as he began to cross the intersection. Although the bus driver was adamant in his postcrash interview that he had pulled forward sufficiently to see clearly in both directions, he failed to see the oncoming truck and proceeded into its path.

So, we'd need both vehicles to be equippped with properly working transponders which could notify either driver that the other driver was about to do something stupid, and...

And we need this out of vehicles that, in the case of the truck, didn't have properly functioning brakes, and in the case of the school bus, don't have the economics to support even basic safety improvements to the vehicles.

Yeah, I've got a friend who's deep in the process of quantifying V2V communications, and he does the major eye-roll when we talk about it. These problems are far better solved with passive systems, ones which warn the truck driver that he's exceeding sight-lines, that are enhancements on known technologies of lane deviation and follow distance warning systems.

Because by the time we have working V2V, we'll have autonomous vehicles anyway.

It's great that the NTSB wants to continue this boondoggle that's pushing so much money into the pockets of professors who are hiring undergrads to work for peanuts, but we should expect more critical thinking from our bureaucrats.