Worst idea ever potentially. Audi, normally the creator of some brilliant advances in automotives, has come up with an idea that has the possibility to very very bad.
They have developed a system that will predict when a traffic light will turn green and tell you how fast you must drive to not have to stop at a light. Great idea on the surface, since idle time is both frustrating and increases pollution significantly. So they idea is that as you are driving, traffic lights up ahead will be communicating with your car to tell it when the light will next turn green. Based on how far you are, you will either drive faster or slower to miss the red or make the green. Makes sense right?
Except for those jackasses who sit at the traffic light inching their way forward every few seconds because they think the light is about to turn. How many car accidents is this going to cause, when people start to just GO because their car said the light is going to turn green. I would guess the same amount of people will start to GO immediatly as the people who will blow the tail end of a yellow light just to make it through. Recipe for disaster.
Unless, they build in some safety such as delays, and not telling you anything while you are stopped, etc.
On the flipside though, it could decrease accidents, since less drivers would be sitting at the intersections. Traffic would flow smoothly, and you basically just become a steering mechanism that follows navigation instructions, just like you already do with a GPS. You become a packet of information in the flow of cars.
