Future Tech: A Car Smart Enough to *Prevent* Traffic Jams

For millions of drivers, those in-car navigation systems inspire something close to full-on techno love. Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who have followed the devices into rivers, onto train tracks, down impassable wilderness trails, or right into another country. Even if you’re not, you should be annoyed that your fancy navigation system cannot solve one of the great scourges of modern life: traffic delays. A 2007 study showed that in the United States alone, drivers spent 4 billion human-hours crawling or sitting on the road that year; those delays cost nearly $90 billion in fuel and lost productivity. Feel free to put your own dollar value on the aggravation. I estimate it in the trillions, just for me.