IBM's prediction

IBM is predicting that the way you drive is going to change dramatically within the next five years. It's annual "Five in Five" forecast, which lists five ways that technology will alter people's lifestyles over the next five years, included the prediction that according to IBM researchers, automotive innovation is going to include services to find the cheapest gas, global positioning technology (which will allow traffic jams to be avoided), web-enabled evasive action to avoid accidents, and sophisticated analytics to ease congestion across entire cities.

As Forbes put it: "automotive innovation normally reserved for the likes of Batman and James Bond is imminent."

Some countries are already way ahead of us. In Singapore, a nationwide initiative provides sensors and cameras to measure and predict the flow of vehicles, and adjusts traffic lights and other roadway signals accordingly. In Stockholm, a "virtual toll booth" electronically tracks vehicles entering the city during peak hours or in high congestion areas. Then it registers a fee associated with the particular vehicle. There is a sensor inside each vehicle, similar to the EZPass system used in New York, but in this case, drivers can pay the fee later online or at certain convenience stores.

“In New York and other cities that use EZPass, tons of traffic data is being collected through automated recognition technology, and until now we weren’t even aware of the possibility of using it as a predictive traffic measure,” says Francoise Legoues, an engineer at International Business Machines Corp. in Armonk, N.Y.

The full story can be found at MSNBC

--Anna Mavromati