“THE days of running red lights may be numbered.
Which is obviously a good thing in the obvious sense that things could get a little safer, but the method by which it may come about is causing some concern.
If you’re at all in fear of a Skynet future controlled entirely by computers such as that featured in the Terminator franchise, look away now.
IBM has applied for a patent that covers “a method for managing engines in response to a traffic signal”.
If you’re crawling through traffic in 2025 and approach a traffic light, IBM hopes it will be able to take control of your car.
And according to the patent, you won’t be able to go again until it lets you.
Which sounds relatively harmless – it’s something we do, or should do, anyway – but the issue of computer-controlled cars had some uneasy light thrown on it last week, when researchers at the universities of Washington and California enjoyed themselves at the expense of current models.
With a laptop and customised software called CarShark, the researchers disabled the brakes of a regular family car and switched its engine off – while it was moving.
They also played with its air-conditioning and added a “countdown” feature, which saw the car stop, doors lock and a series of little honks notify the driver trapped inside that their engine is about to die.
You can read their report of the experiment here.
Admittedly, they needed to attach the laptop to the car’s engine, but in the wireless technology age, it serves as a wakeup call to car manufacturers that on-board computer security is a risk they’ll have to manage far more effectively.
Particularly if IBM sees a future in which cars can be remotely controlled by traffic lights.
It’s patent application claims the technology is all in the name of “fuel consumption efficiency”.
The application abstract includes juicy Big Brother-esque terms such as “establishing communications with participating vehicles”, “sending a stop-engine notification to the list of participating vehicles”, and “calculating an optimal time for an engine of a second vehicle in the queue to start”.
The question most will ask is “Can it be be enshrined in legislation?”. In a word, yes.
In 2008, it became mandatory for all American cars to be fitted with CAN (Controller Area Network), a standard protocol for enabling all the car’s electronics to talk to each other, so there’s one part of the puzzle in place.
Just make sure you log your car off before locking it.”
article courtesy of news.com.au