Letter: Traffic hack

From Alan Chattaway

Nic Fleming envisages a future of self-driving cars that communicate with each other about road conditions (3 April, p 34).

If this vision becomes reality, each car will in effect form part of a self-optimising system. Unfortunately, when such systems contain no slack, they can fail spectacularly if a single component goes wrong; traffic jams are a perfect example.

I would guess that we can look forward to a future of 200-car pile-ups. They might be rare, but they will certainly get headlines.

Fleming did not discuss the potential for this interdependent, computer-driven network to be hacked, or even poisoned by a few cars being deliberately used to feed it false information. There are many who might profit from causing, or threatening to cause, widespread traffic disruption in a major city.

Surrey, British Columbia, Canada