Of course those of us who choose not to carry a phone won't be seen because the car didn't see us and the person behind the wheel is not paying attention to anything but to do with driving except what the car tells him.

Great idea.
Make it so it can detect a deer then you have a winner.

Wireless adhoc networking holds the key to eradicating the human element from urban driving. Done properly it means the end of prangs, traffic lights, and drunk drivers. Trouble is, some people actually enjoy the chore of driving and will come up with all sorts of dumb excuses to keep doing it. People like Slowburn will have no choice but to carry a wireless device of some kind if they wish to interact with traffic. Country driving is a different ballgame and the transition from "controlled roadspace" to "open road" will always have to be made somewhere.

Great, so a speeding ambulance can lock everyone down within a traveling hi speed zone, and then what/who decides when the speeding cop car going the similar route, suddenly all hell breaks looose, as the signals STOP ..... Oh ya that's the hacker who jambs all signals but his....
Dream on folks... god gave us senses...............USE them!!

As much as I have to agree with all above, yes, you your sense and the ultimate one... common sense.
But kidding apart, Ford's been working on something similar for a while now.

re; nutcase
How bout they use a sensors that can see pets, small children, and say a box of rocks.

I have no problem with autonomously operating vehicles and would expect mine to spend a lot of time screaming to the other cars, "THE IDIOT IS DRIVING. THE IDIOT IS DRIVING."
But driver "aids" that can not show everyone and the vermin eating coyotes as well are a mistake.

Well the idea was pulished in a paper in 2008. The investigation went further into using new protected bandwiths with IEEE 802.11, otherwise the system would have amateur status when being jammed. The paper was featuring a second invention, the use of trajecories constructed from self tracking. Nowadays it is easy using on board sensors of the nomadic devices to define the velocity and headway. Of course the system does only cover those equipped, but the prices of the devices are constantly falling. So I'm looking towards patent claims issued by GM to compare with the publication!

re;Slowburn: the opportunity already exists to sabotage the traffic network. For a while there we had kids dropping rocks on cars from freeway overpasses. Commonsense works both ways ya know ;)

re; nutcase
The "box of rocks" was a stand in for any inert object that could have been accidentally dropped onto the road whether from a truck or the side of a mountain. Dealing with criminal activity is another although related subject.