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A device that could dramatically reduce the number of collisions by eliminating driver error is to be tested in Europe. The system uses technology similar to wi-fi to enable vehicles to communicate with each other, sharing information about their speed and location, to determine when a crash is imminent. It can then warn the driver or take over the controls.

Cohda Wireless, an Australian technology start-up, will announce this month that it has signed a multi-million-pound contract with a partnership of several European governments to begin the first big trial of its vehicle communication system. It claims its technology could cut road fatalities by half.

Known as the Cohda intelligent transport system, the technology uses a GPS locator and a chip that allows cars to communicate their speed and location, 10 times per second over a radio frequency, to other similarly equipped vehicles within a 500ft radius. The device will alert drivers if, for example, a car jumps a red light, or advise them when it is unsafe to overtake. If it detects the potential for a collision, the system can give an audible warning or take over the reins if the driver’s reactions prove too slow.

“The first trial systems will only give a warning,” says Paul Alexander, chief technical officer for Cohda. “But the ultimate vision is to pretty much remove driver error by allowing the car to react for you.”

This will initially take the form of tightening seatbelt tensions and intensifying braking pressure prior to a crash. In the future it will include controlling the steering, applying the brakes autonomously and even lowering a “curtain or shield” over the windscreen, preventing the panicking driver from seeing what is happening and making rash decisions; instead the car’s chip would take over.

The trials will begin towards the end of this year, involving hundreds, possibly thousands, of vehicles (some private, some local authority), although the company will not say in which country or countries the year-long test will take place. Cohda is also in discussion with European and American car manufacturers about installing the system, which costs about $100 (£66) for each basic in-vehicle device.

Alexander has been working on the Cohda system for five years. He claims its technology is more effective than rivals’ because of its specially designed chips which can maintain a reliable connection even when moving at speed. Ordinary wi-fi chips, of the kind used in laptop computers, say, are intended for use primarily when static. The system can also work in conjunction with roadside beacons, which can relay information about traffic flow to highways agencies and could also be used to administer road-charging systems, although this significantly increases the cost.

Cohda is not alone in rushing towards a future in which drivers are marginalised by computer power. BMW has been researching similar systems for more than two years in conjunction with the Car 2 Car Communication Consortium, a partnership of car manufacturers and technology suppliers that includes Audi, Fiat, Honda and Renault. Together they have been working to ensure that the various systems under development will be compatible.

Last week saw the start of the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge, a €500,000 (£448,000) prize to find the best system of this kind, so as to “reduce traffic jams, minimise CO2 emissions and prevent accidents on the road”. The competition, which is based in Holland, will climax with an on-road driving challenge in 2011. About 60 researchers are taking part from around the world. “Who will become the Microsoft of the car operating system?” asks Egbert-Jan Sol, chief technical officer for TNO, a Dutch research organisation and one of the competition organisers. “It will take decades, five system generations of evolution, but the automobile will become a real automobile.” Cohda’s first system, although a far cry from Sol’s vision of a truly “autonomous automobile”, is scheduled to go into production towards the end of 2012.

Thomas Batz, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing in Karlsruhe, Germany, is researching a system that could ultimately fulfil Sol’s goal, although not within the next decade. “Our aim is to develop a software system which works in many vehicles and will be able to co-ordinate the appropriate response to a given emergency situation,” says Batz. “If all the vehicles are reacting automatically and in a co-ordinated way to the dangerous situation, there is more chance of averting a fatal crash than if each driver is reacting independently. Left to his own devices, an individual driver can often do exactly the wrong thing and make the collision much worse than it needs to be.” Beyond this, Batz is also working to develop fully autonomous vehicles.

Not everyone is enamoured with the rapidly advancing technology. Some motoring organisations fear that semi-autonomous safety systems will produce less attentive drivers, too accustomed to relying on technology to do the thinking for them and less able to react when it lets them down. “We must embrace technology but we must not become robots in our own cars,” says Edmund King, president of the AA. “If you’re driving along and you know Big Brother is controlling your car, you may not pay as much attention. Human judgment will still be important however good the technology is — especially if we have a situation where only some vehicles have the system and others aren’t being picked up.”

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