Automakers talk to traffic lights, try Wi-Fi safety features in road tests

Audi, BMW and Ford introduce new technologies that allow their cars to communicate with each other and the road.

With the federal government conducting a massiveconnected-car test in Ann Arbor, Mich., to study the safety benefits of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastru​cture (V2I) communication, a similar but smaller scale project has already been completed in Europe.

The Safe and Intelligent Mobility-Test Field research project (simTD) brought together six automakers, several automotive suppliers and technology companies, universities and research institutes and local and state governments. The test was conducted in and around Frankfurt to show how the technology -- which simTD calls “car-to-x”  -- can make driving both safer and more fuel efficient (and therefore, better for traffic flow and the environment).

While the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration could mandate V2V communication technology on all new cars, the simTD project introduced new safety technologies from Audi, BMW and Ford that could eventually appear on production cars.

autos.msn.com