> It’s important to note that VTL technology ... let[s] nearby cars communicate wirelessly. DSRC developers envisioned various uses, including electronic toll c

> It’s important to note that VTL technology ... let[s] nearby cars communicate wirelessly. DSRC developers envisioned various uses, including electronic toll collection and cooperative adaptive cruise control—and also precisely the function we are using it for, intersection collision avoidance. I really hope that vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communication is architected to preserve privacy. I really don't want my car constantly transmitting its license plate number, VIN, or even a randomly-generated GUID all the time to all comers. If it does, it'll end up being like having a license plate reader at every intersection and on every police car: your movements would no longer have any privacy. However, it's probably a super-hard engineering problem to build a privacy-preserving vehicle communication system, so it's unlikely it'll be done. > The principle behind the traffic light has hardly changed since the device was invented in 1912 and deployed in Salt Lake City, and two years later, in Cleveland. It works on a timer-based approach, which is why you sometimes find yourself sitting behind a red light at an intersection when there are no other cars in sight. The timing can be adjusted to match traffic patterns at different points in the commuting cycle, but that is about all the fine-tuning you can do, and it’s not much. As a result, a lot of people waste a lot of time. Every day. Isn't that false? Aren't a lot of modern traffic lights equipped with induction loops in the road surface [1], so they can detect if cars are waiting? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_loop#Vehicle_detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_loop#Vehicle_detecti...