OneAndOneIs2

No, not a reference to the Tux500 - tho if you haven't donated already, you should at least consider it.

No, I'm talking about the US government's Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Consortium - which aims to reduce road fatalities by putting computers into cars. And has picked Linux as the OS.

Living in a country run by a car-hating government, where they would only be interested in such a PC if it could measure your speed and fine you every time you broke the speed limit, it's actually quite refreshing to see some more worthwhile uses put forward.

For instance, we all know how important brake lights are on cars: A sudden sea of red lights in front of you is a good indication that you should be thinking very seriously about slowing down. Assuming you can see all those brakes, that is.

What if, as well as brake lights, you had a system in place that alerted you whenever a car in front of you braked hard enough to trigger the ABS system? When that happens, you'll very likely have to brake hard yourself, so the sooner you know about it, the better.

Ever been sitting in traffic, heard a siren, and thought "Where's it coming from? Do I need to move?" - wouldn't it be nice if your car could tell you what emergency vehicle was coming and in which direction?

Ever gone round a corner and had to hit the brakes because there was an accident just around it? Wouldn't it be nice if your car had told you as you approached that the last dozen cars that rounded the corner had hit their brakes sharply?

To say nothing of simpler matters like knowing that every car a few miles in front of you has its windscreen wipers on, so you should probably pull over and put your soft-top back up. And naturally, if you've got a computer on board, it might as well be able to play your music and upgrade your car's firmware while it's at it.

Top Gear showed an interesting gadget on a car a while ago: An infra-red camera put a fully-illuminated image of the road ahead onto the car dashboard. Most webcams can be easily converted to be IR (I've done it myself) so this would be a perfectly simple and not-very-expensive addition to the project.

All-in-all, an interesting project all-round. I shall have to keep my eyes on it..