With few exceptions, car crashes are a bummer. The 6 million traffic accidents that happen every year in the United States — some of which are absolutely horrific — end up killing about 40,000 people and is the third leading cause of death in developed countries, behind heart disease and lung cancer. Thank God, scientists think they can eradicate the problem with a little bit of experimentation and a whole lot of computers.Daimler is the latest car company to test the ambitious idea of network-linked automobiles with a real world trial. Essentially, they’re putting 120 cars on the road that are equipped to talk to each other with wireless communication. This technology enables vehicles to alert each other about everything from hazardous road conditions to dangerous driving activity around them. It’s also plugged in to the network grid that controls stop lights so they can be adjusted based on traffic patterns. The company calls the system “a significant step on the path towards accident-free driving,” and if it works, it could become the European standard.Here’s in the U.S.A. we’re working on our own talking car technology. This month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is sending 2,800 cars, trucks and buses into the streets of Ann Arbor, Michigan equipped with little squawk boxes that transmit vehicle data like speed and location as well as alert the driver to dangerous situations. Similar devices will be installed at a few dangerous intersections that will in essence allow drivers to see around corners. If people would just let the computers do the work, we could be accident free, says program manager Jim Sayer. “I don’t know that we'll fully eliminate crashes because people can do things intentionally sometimes,” he told the local paper when the program was announced earlier this year. “But I do think we can come really close to eliminating crashes.” It doesn’t come cheap, though. The Ann Arbor experiment alone bears a price tag of about $22 million.Taxpayer dollars don’t necessarily have to solve this problem. It seems like if we just wait around for a few years, Google will just figure it out for us. The search giant announced this week that their driverless cars have completed over 300,000 miles of testing without a single crash. Now, they’re training the software to handle more advanced challenges like driving in the snow and dealing with construction sites. Now road legal in Nevada, these cars really are great at avoiding accidents. Until you let a human drive them, that is.
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