(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Todor Tsvetkov)

Over the next few years, more vehicles will start being aware of others around them to help prevent accidents. The US government wants to accelerate the deployment of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication to improve safety. 

V2V is relatively new, and the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) has already committed to delivering proposed rules for its usage by next year. Anthony Foxx, US Department of Transport Secretary, doesn't think this is fast enough and has asked the agency to speed-up discussion in a post which starts by saying "Safety is our first priority here at the DOT". 

In April, Delphi Automotive completed a 3,400 mile journey from California to New York with 99 percent of the drive taking place in fully automated mode.  The company has said before “Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication are key to achieving Delphi’s vision of zero fatalities, zero accidents and zero injuries on the world's roadways.”

More vehicles will start being aware of others around them to help prevent accidents.

Safety is the foremost priority for driverless cars, as a single mistake or sensor failure could prove fatal. It will also go towards convincing their uptake, as there are still many concerns amongst travelers about handing over control to a computer. In a USwitch study, half of Brits were unwilling to be a passenger in a driverless car. 

Of course humans aren't exempt to error either, and in many scenarios a driverless car will perform better. For example, in bad conditions where eyesight is limited a car's sensors will still be able to communicate with others on the road to get a clearer picture than what the driver would have been able to. Similarly, if a driver was struck by a sudden medical issue - such as a heart attack - the vehicle wouldn't become a danger to others. 

Before we hand complete control over to our cars; it's likely that V2V technology will be used to aid current drivers. This will help improve trust in the computer's decision-making, and ensure systems are able to learn about the often unpredictable scenarios which occur when driving through data collection and machine-learning. 

Do you think we should speed-up Vehicle-to-Vehicle deployment? Let us know in the comments.