Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Rubberneck TV

I sat in a traffic jam on I-280 this morning that stretched for ~5 miles, apparently caused by a motorcycle accident. I realized that there is a very cool and useful feature that should be available for current model cars, what with their LCD panels and communication systems built in to the navigation dashboard: RubberneckTV!

The basic idea is that when a traffic backup occurs due to a crash, there could be a single reporter with a camera (or maybe even a passing motorist vlogger) that is on the scene right away. They would have access to a special mobile transmitter, able to transmit footage and a live report to the cars waiting in traffic due to the crash.

So people could tune in, find out about the crash, find out if anyone was hurt, etc. They could get their entire fix of the most immediately relevent news item in their life at the moment. After 30 minutes of waiting in traffic, when they finally reach the crash scene, there will be no slowing down to take a look, because it will already be stale news...

Onnx