On the road to safety

An Australian firm is confident it has come up with a system which could halve the number of accidents on the world's roads. Cohda Wireless was set up in Adelaide in 2004 by a group of research scientists working on car-to-car communication in a bid to improve road safety. Their first foray into business entailed working with police, fire and ambulance services - mainly in the United States - enabling their vehicles to have access whenever and wherever they were.

But, as the company's chief technical officer Dr Paul Alexander admitted, "that market didn't really take off", so two years ago Cohda Wireless moved onto their latest project which is on the verge of being realised. Alexander explained: "It's basically an industry that doesn't exist currently but we've done the research and development, and have no doubt that it will be successful." Much like satellite navigation systems, it is based on Wi-Fi connections and will enable all cars fitted with the software to be able to communicate with other cars up to a range of 150 metres. And it is loosely based on the TAG system used by cars for road tolls and congestion charges across the world.