Until taxpaying drivers are willing to shoulder the costs for retrofitting highways, smart cars are nonstarter. Until it is proven that fast lanes will ease congestion, cars that drive themselves are garaged in some gauzy future. But the digital revolution has hardly bypassed the auto industry. Cars are getting smarter. Better still, the technologies that will appear in showrooms over the next 24 months will do a lot to ease congestion and prevent accidents.
Most cars have several computers.
High-end makes have a dozen or more, supervising everything from shifting gears to remembering your seat position. My biggest source of information in which most of the quotes come from, was an article in Smart Business Magazine, the April 2001 issue.