Cars Mutant

Dear Tesla fan who wants to run over a kid to prove a point,

Hi, my name’s Andy and I’m a transportation editor. I saw on Twitter — yes, I know, not a great place to see things — that you were going to run over a kid to prove a point. Something about Tesla and Autopilot and some video on Twitter — again, bad place, should avoid — of a test showing a Tesla vehicle running over a kid-sized dummy and you wanting to prove that those tests are bogus and wrong so you were going to try to run over a real kid to prove your point.

An open letter to the Tesla fan who wants to run over a kid to prove a point Let’s not harm children just to win a Twitter fight.

Today, the DC circuit court released its decision, siding with the Federal Communications Commission, on its reallocation of part of the 5.9GHz band. It’s a big win for the FCC and a big loss for the auto industry, which has promised to use the airwaves to improve safety through a technology called “vehicle-to-vehicle” (V2V) or “vehicle-to-everything” (V2X) communication.

The problem, as hilariously put by Judge Justin Walker in his opinion, is that this technology has never really existed. It was one of those “just around the corner”-type innovations that has always been promised but never actually delivered. It was a fantasy, and today, the court’s basically said as much.

THE PROBLEM, AS HILARIOUSLY PUT BY JUDGE JUSTIN WALKER IN HIS OPINION, IS THAT THIS TECHNOLOGY HAS NEVER REALLY EXISTED
But first, a little history lesson: in 1999, the FCC agreed to set aside 75 megahertz of spectrum in the 5.9 gigahertz band for something called dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) services, which would be used to improve road safety through V2X technologies.

Broadly speaking, V2X allows vehicles to send and receive messages about road conditions, like speeding cars, weather, or traffic congestion. It could also help prevent crashes by using that information to make decisions, like applying emergency braking

The auto industry lost its spectrum fight with the FCC because V2V was always a fantasy The promise of V2V technology never materialized.