The Government Plans An Internet Of Networked Cars

Could the Internet of Things arrive on our roadways sooner than we imagined? If Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has his way, it just might. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a proposal that would require all automakers to install ERDs--Electronic Recording Devices--in their vehicles by 2014. The requirement would let the NHTSA’s team of researchers dip into a massive well of data concerning how and why car crashes happen. But these proposed requirements are only a hint of what the NHTSA is planning. Sec LaHood and his team are convinced that ubiquitous computing could make us hugely safer drivers. More specifically, they think it could reduce crashes by over 80%, by enabling our cars to interface with each other over a Wi-Fi network.