The Wide Angle: 10 Parts of a Smart HighwayBy Jonathan Strickland, HowStuffWorks.com
Where Smart Meets Safety According to the National Safety Council, there was an 8 percent drop in motor vehicle deaths in 2008. The number of deaths is still sobering: Around 39,800 people lost their lives due to motor vehicle accidents. Smart highways may help decrease fatality rates in the future.
At the 1939 World's Fair, General Motors presented a special exhibit called Futurama. The exhibit's centerpiece was a dynamic diorama of a futuristic city, complete with automated highways that would allow motorists to travel at an average speed of 100 miles an hour with the help of electronics. Best of all, according to General Motors, this future would become reality by 1960. "And now we see an enlarged section of 1960's express motorway," said the announcer for the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair. "Along the ledge of this beautiful precipice, traffic moves at unreduced rates of speed. Safe distance between cars is maintained by automatic radio control. Curved sides assist the driver in keeping his car within the proper lane under all circumstances. The keynote of this motorway: safety." He continued, "Safety with increased speed." Of course, 1960 came and went without much progress made toward the World of Tomorrow and its astounding highways. That didn't stop General Motors from hosting Futurama II at the 1964 World's Fair. This time, the exhibit claimed that in the near future we would all travel in cars controlled by computers, eliminating human error and getting us to our destinations in record time. Seventy years after the first Futurama exhibit, we're still waiting for these amazing intelligent highways. But it might surprise you to learn that some of the elements necessary to bring the dream into reality are already in place. Several U.S. highways and roads have advanced technology in place to help traffic run smoothly and improve safety on the road. |
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GET MORE OF THE WIDE ANGLE!Intelligent highways equipped with wireless technology, fiber optics, sensors, cameras, GPS, electronic signs and robotic car have the potential to decrease traffic congestion, increase highway safety and reduce the environmental impact caused by traffic jams. We take a wide-angle view on what those future roads may look like, here on Earth and even in the skies.
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