University of Michigan Researchers Want More Talking Cars for Experiment

University of Michigan researchers want to triple the number of so-called talking cars involved in an experiment they and government officials hope will lead to safer roads.

Nearly 3,000 wirelessly connected cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles already are operating in Ann Arbor as a part of the study conducted by the university’s Transportation Research Institute and funded in large part by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The Ann Arbor News reports Tuesday Michigan would like to see 9,000 intelligent vehicles operating in the city within the next two years.

The deployment of such vehicles was launched in 2012. They are being used to study how cars equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communication devices interact with each another and with wirelessly equipped infrastructure, such as intersections and street lights.