“By 2014, you’re going to see nearly every auto manufacturer have a connected vehicle option,’’ said Leo McCloskey, vice president of marketing at Airbiquity Inc., a Seattle firm that manages wireless communications for many models of connected cars.
About 40 percent of the cars sold in the United States last year can already connect to wireless data networks, allowing drivers to listen to Internet radio stations or get traffic reports; the next step will be cars that constantly monitor online data.
Alan Taub, vice president of global research and development for General Motors Corp., said his company’s goal is “360-degree situational awareness’’ - a car that can “see’’ and respond to its environment.
Too much technology, however, might overwhelm drivers, posing new dangers.
“The human mind is an incredible computer, but it’s limited,’’ said Bryan Reimer, associate director of the New England University Transportation Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which studies, among other things, the impact of vehicle technologies on driver behavior.
Even small demands on the brain can affect the way you drive, Reimer said.
For example, research showed changes in behavior when drivers simply repeated numbers as they were read out loud. “You drive slightly differently,’’ he said. “Your heart rate increases. [You’re still] oriented forward, but less situationally aware.’’
Reimer is concerned about the prospect of grappling with a stream of tweets and Facebook updates on a car’s video screen, while also negotiating the demands of rush-hour traffic and perhaps cellphone conversations.
“It is the challenge of the auto industry, as well as regulators, to objectively assess what tasks should be safely allowed in the vehicle,’’ he said. “We need to do a better job of engineering before we put all this in front of someone.’’
