Car radios to be set to avoid an accident

December 21, 2003|By Jon Van, Tribune staff reporter.

One day, car radios will take on tasks far beyond playing music or reporting sports scores. They'll also help avert collisions or pay for fuel.

Such technology to enhance auto safety is fairly advanced, and necessary steps to implement it are in the works. Last week the Federal Communications Commission adopted licensing and service rules for a new radio safety service, setting the stage for signals to be sent to automobiles from roadside transmitters and for transmissions between vehicles.

One early application probably will be a transmitter built into the flashing lights at the site of road work. In this case, a device in the driver's car would send an alert that a road crew is operating up ahead--before a driver gets close enough to see the flashing lights.

A more ambitious use would employ global positioning system signals, combined with vehicle-to-vehicle radio communication, to calculate whether two cars approaching an intersection are likely to collide, enabling the system to anticipate crashes and avert them.

Federal regulators have been working for years with the auto and radio industries to lay the groundwork for wireless services that will enhance the safety and convenience of motoring, said Cal Hackeman, who heads the technology practice for Grant Thornton, a consultancy.

"It won't happen immediately, but at some point this technology will not only alert you when there's an accident ahead, but it will give you routing instructions to avoid it," said Hackeman. "This will bring Wi-Fi from the coffee shop to the automobile."

Providing information to prevent collisions is a difficult task, but technology has solved most of the problems, said Don Remboski, director of Motorola's Automotive Innovation Center in Farmington Hills, Mich.

"We've been working on this since the FCC first proposed it in 1999," Remboski said. "We have the technology to make it work."

By combining global positioning data with information generated from radio signals between moving vehicles, it is possible to calculate their locations and probable path to a high degree of certainty, he said. If the cars are on a collision path, systems to slow them down to avoid a crash can be activated. Perhaps the more difficult problem is getting the crash-avoidance equipment into place.

"It's like a fax machine," Remboski said. "If you just have one fax machine, it has no value because you can't do anything with it. When you have two machines, there's some value because you can fax things back and forth. When everyone has a fax machine, there's a great deal of value."

To spread the technology, Motorola is focusing on simpler applications that provide immediate value, he said. If just a few automobiles are alerted to road work ahead, that benefits those motorists, Remboski said.

As more cars are equipped with the necessary radio equipment to get basic safety information, eventually they can take advantage of more advanced collision avoidance.

Convenience features such as paying tolls and gasoline bills wirelessly will enhance the radio system's value, he said.

By allocating radio spectrum for the service and establishing procedures for licensing, the FCC provided a necessary component to launch the service, but Remboski said it will be several years before motorists reap the benefits.

"The lead time for building something like this into an automobile is five years," he said. "So we're still at least five years away from getting these radio systems into vehicles that people can buy."