Soon, speaking cars to help you navigate

London: Japanese carmaker Nissan has announced plans to test an "intelligent transportation system" that sends wireless messages to passing cars.

In the 30-month experiment involving around 10,000 drivers, messages will be beamed optically from roadside beacons to passing cars and information received by an onboard computer will alert a driver to potential danger from approaching vehicles or inform them of traffic congestions ahead, said Nissan in a statement.

According to New Scientist, the test will start on October 1 2006 on public roads in Kanagawa, a prefecture just south of Tokyo.

Nissan has said it is hoping to commercialise the system by 2010.

Experts believe the project will be viable in Japan because more than 50 per cent of cars in the far eastern Pacific archipelago are already equipped with navigational gadgets such as satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers.

Compared to this, fewer than 10 per cent of vehicles in the US and Europe are equipped with such navigational instruments.

Nissan said the experiment would test several functions including a "vehicle alert", which will tell drivers that another vehicle is moving too fast at a blind intersection. In this situation a voice message will warn the driver: "Car approaching from left (or right)".

Similarly, when drivers are traveling above the speed limit a "speed alert" will be issued.

Likewise, in a school zone, a warning sign will appear on the navigation screen and a voice warning will state: "School ahead. Watch your speed".

Nissan has said the system would also include a "dynamic route finder", which will inform drivers of the quickest route to their destination using data collected from other vehicles.

Drivers will be also able to synchronise their cellphone with a car's navigation system in order to relay information about their journey to a central command system, the statement added.