Homenagem Ana Picasso

[BooM]

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Henry Ford created the modern auto industry with his mass-produced Model T. Now, a century later, his great grandson is worried about “global gridlock” from too many cars.

Ford Motor Co. Chairman Bill Ford says the worldwide fleet of cars and trucks could grow by the middle of this century to two billion to four billion vehicles from 800 million vehicles now.

“Where are these people going to go? Where are those cars going to go?” Mr. Ford asked in an interview Thursday at the Wall Street Journal’s ECO:Nomics conference here.

Already, he says, daily commutes in Beijing can last five hours – and that’s when motorists don’t bog down in multi-day traffic jams as they did last summer.

“People in Los Angeles and New York think they’re in gridlock,” Mr. Ford says. “It’s nothing like what they have seen already in other parts of the world.”

As more of the world’s population moves into big cities, the answer to traffic congestion won’t be building more roads, Mr. Ford says, because there won’t be any space.

“This is going to be a real drag on global growth unless we solve it,” he says.

It’s more than a matter of inconvenience, Mr. Ford says. “It’s really a human rights issue. How are you going to move food in gridlock? How do you move to health care?”

Part of the answer, Mr. Ford says, could come from technology that allows vehicles to communicate with each other on the highway. A car could send signals to vehicles behind when it gets bogged down in traffic, alerting the trailing drivers to find an alternative route.

Drivers could use on board information systems to find and reserve parking spaces – reducing fuel consumption and traffic snarls created by motorists hunting from block to block for a place to park.

Mr. Ford says there’s no “silver bullet” solution to the gridlock issue. Ford is investing in vehicle-to-vehicle communications technology, he says, and predicts that customers will value it enough to pay for it. But Mr. Ford says governments should pitch in with investments in infrastructure, such as technology to speed traffic through intersections.

“I believe we can do it, and technology can set us free,” he says.

You can watch the Ford interview here.

Encontrei isto no TED.. Interessante.

Bill Ford: A future beyond traffic gridlock

[gleal]

Não vi o video e li o texto na diagonal, mas vou mandar o meu bitaite na mesma :-..

Já discuti mais ou menos este assunto nas tertulias de sábado à noite, mas mais numa questão de segurança do que de tráfico. Penso que o futuro invariavelmente passará por aí, carros que comunicam com os carros circundantes e através do cruzamento de alguns dados críticos desses veículos (localização, velocidade, aceleração, etc) calculam e interferem na condução de modo a evitarem colisões. Num modo mais avançado funcionará como algumas ajudas dos jogos de corridas, cálculo o ângulo da curva que se aproxima, cruza com a velocidade e aceleração ou desaceleração do carro e aplica travagem se necessário. Algumas destas ajudas já existem nos carros novosa hoje em dia. Mas aproximamo-nos de um obstáculo importante: até que ponto estamos dispostos a deixarmos ser o carro a decidir estas e outras situações? A Volvo há uns anos veio com uma ideia de implementar nos seus carros um sistema de segurança que só deixava o motor arrancar depois de o condutor assoprar para dentro da chave e do teste revelar uma taxa de alcolémia dentro da lei mas depressa a deixou cair.

Já há muito tempo que há tecnologia suficiente para se criar uma norma europeia para todos o carros incluirem localizadores gps ligados a uma rede que os impedia electronicamente de circularem em excesso de velocidade e de cometrem algumas infracções, mas depois quem os comprava?