PARIS — Car-to-car communication is a dream of traffic researchers. Radar, video and other sensors in a car would understand the environment around it and communicate such information as sudden braking, rainfall and speed to the receptors in other cars, enabling other drivers to avoid accidents and congestion.

High-tech car-to-car communication is already here in France, but the object is avoiding fines of 90 euros ($140) or more for speeding. Several companies have introduced devices that will alert drivers to the presence of mobile radar units set up by the police. One such device is made by Coyote, a French company, which plans to bring its product to the United States early next year.

Coyote’s best-selling model is the Mini Coyote. It costs around $225, which includes three months of service. After that, there’s a monthly charge of $15.

The Mini Coyote is the size of a cellphone and fits on a car’s dashboard. When a subscriber to the system spots a mobile radar unit beside the road, the driver pushes a button on the device that sends a signal to a central computer giving the location and direction of travel being watched. Three seconds later, the computer sends a warning to all other subscribers within 12½ miles of the point.

Jean-Marc Van Laethem, chief executive for Coyote, started the company with a partner in 2006. Today, there are 250,000 subscribers in France.

Read more . . .

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Tags: car communication, car-to-car communication, cellphone, connecting cars, coyote, mobile radar, speeding tickets

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Communications, Innovation, NY Times, Shape of Things to Come?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.