More airbags and better engineered crumple zones are very important when it comes to vehicle safety but the future does not rely on those. Instead, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration both think that smarter cars are the key to safer roads.
The feds believe that the technology already exists that would allow vehicles to communicate with each other. This vehicle-to-vehicle communication would make the road safer by giving any car correct information about cars within its immediate vicinity.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that “V2V has the potential to help drivers avoid 70 to 80 percent of crashes that involve unimpaired drivers.” “The potential of this technology is absolutely enormous,” he added.
Already, a fleet of 3,000 vehicles in Ann Arbor, Michigan are equipped with V2V and are being tested. In Europe, tests are being done as well.