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VW Golfs in Europe will communicate with wireless safety tech
The newest generation of Volkswagen's popular Golf will get the ability to communicate directly with other cars with wireless technology called V2X -- short for vehicle to everything. The technology has been slow to catch on but has the potential to reduce accident rates, which is the reason Volkswagen's adding it to its cars in Europe.
The Golf is the first major car model to get the V2X ability, and Volkswagen and its V2X chip supplier, NXP Semiconductors, hope the milestone will encourage others to follow suit. The more vehicles and infrastructure like traffic signals with the V2X communication ability, the more useful it becomes.
"Volkswagen includes this technology, which doesn't involve any user fees, as a standard feature to accelerate V2X penetration in Europe," said Johannes Neft, Volkswagen's head of vehicle body development, in a statement Monday.
V2X has the potential to revolutionize car safety by letting cars pay better attention to their surroundings, in all directions at once simultaneously and without getting drowsy like a human driver. V2X also could become an important foundation for autonomous vehicles, though leading companies like Waymo and Cruise aren't counting on it for now.
However, there are two incompatible versions of V2X technology: the older V2X standard one Volkswagen and NXP endorse, based on a variation of Wi-Fi networking, and a newer effort called C-V2X that uses the same mobile network technology as your phone.
The older standard, called Wi-Fi-p and pWLAN in Europe and Digital Short-Range Communications (DSRC) in the US, has been under development for about two decades but hasn't caught on except in pockets.
C-V2X has the advantage of using technology cars might build in directly anyway so they can download software updates, refresh map and traffic data, and offer streaming video to passengers. C-V2X also has the backing of powerful wireless network industry players who right now are eager to promote new uses of their nascent 5G networks.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:22PM (3 children)
Yeah, just like lane-tracking vehicles were going to be the downfall of civilisation because jokers would go out painting lines in the road to fool them. Face it, there just aren't enough arseholes in the world to validate your concerns.
Yes, what you suggest is technically possible, but right now it's technically possible for someone to put blue lights and a siren on a car an impersonate a police car. How often does that happen IRL? More than "never" I'm sure but it's hardly an epidemic.
So sure, some abuses of this new technology will be possible. But the technology itself will mitigate potential abuses as best it can (and report the ones that occur), and the law and society will deter most of the rest. It's like rubber-hose decryption: Sure, a malicious person could hack the car communication system to cause vehicular chaos, but if it would be a lot easier and cheaper to just drop bricks off an overpass.
This will happen, and we'll end up with exactly what we have now: An imperfect system that works very well most of the time, but gets abused very occasionally. The only difference is we'll have cool things like:
"Hey, car 956353209. Just to let you know that I just passed an obstruction on your side of the road round that bend. You might want to slow down." Or...
"Hey, car 847399574, this is the traffic light. Just to let you know I'm going to go green in 1.1 seconds, so you probably don't need to change down a gear." Or...
"Hey, car 934754495, I'm going to drift right to go around a big puddle. Don't think about overtaking just yet." Or...
"Holy Crap! Something's in the road and I'm braking hard NOW! Inform the car behind you!"
The potential for improved safety and efficiency far outweighs any possible gimmicky hack bullshit.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:22PM (1 child)
> Yes, what you suggest is technically possible, but right now it's technically possible for someone to put blue lights and a siren on a car an impersonate a police car. How often does that happen IRL? More than "never" I'm sure but it's hardly an epidemic.
I used to see it almost every day when I lived in London (UK). I now live out in the shires, and even here, I would occasionally see it (maybe once a month). Problem is, you can't be sure if the car in question is a legit undercover police car, or someone just put some blue lights and a siren in their car to bypass the rush hour traffic, so you assume they are cops and make a space for them to pass by.
I have noticed what I think are legit police cars tend to have at least two police officers inside, usually with stab vests on, even if the car outside looks completely normal. Quite often, when such vehicles are passing by, I just see one normally dressed person in the "undercover police car", and once I saw a lady with a baby in the back seat.
So yeah, I would say it happens often enough, and considering the penalties of impersonating a police officer can be quite high, I am surprised so many people seem to bother. I can only assume the police don't bother chasing up such crimes very much.
If it becomes as simple as buying a little Chinese device you attach to your car that (silently) makes others get out of the way, I can see it becoming so common that most people will be doing it (a bit like how radar speed camera detectors were once a big thing, until they moved away from radar based mobile speed cameras towards average speed cameras using ANPR).
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 31 2019, @05:47PM
> Problem is, you can't be sure if the car in question is a legit undercover police car, or someone just put some blue lights and a siren in their car to bypass the rush hour traffic,
Indeed. That fact kind of pisses on the rest of your anecdote, though.
> I just see one normally dressed person in the "undercover police car",
Well it would be a pretty shit "undercover" car if it had a copper in full uniform behind the wheel.
> a little Chinese device you attach to your car that (silently) makes others get out of the
Ah, the "silent" thing gets a little tricky though, doesn't it? The tracking and privacy invasion that everybody's worried about (assuming that such logging / centralised collection of data is implemented) here actually becomes useful.
Simply have all cars that receive a blue-light request report it immediately to the emergency services along with coordinates and any other relevant data. The authorities can check it automatically against their own records and, if there is no legitimate vehicle in the area making such a request, have the reporting cars' upload full logs (including camera data) that can be used to locate and identify the offending vehicle in realtime. With luck the perp would have a REAL blue light breathing down their neck within minutes. (Impersonating an officer is the kind of thing the police really don't take kindly to.)
Even if you have a less direct way of moving other cars out of your way (false reporting of obstacles, aggressive driving) then data from the other cars could be used to recognise, flag and report such behaviour.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @04:40PM
It's not about causing chaos or damage, it's about getting a better run through traffic. You tell other cars to get out of your way, and traffic lights that you have an emergency on board. Sure it will be illegal, but you better believe assholes will pay some nerd $100 for a little black box that makes their commute faster.