The influence of public acceptance on what IVHS can achieve

IVHS (Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems) combine computing, sensors, telecommunication to deliver a more effective road/vehicle system for freight and passenger vehicles. Many of these technologies involve surveillance, identification and location and collate such data for further use. These and other aspects of IVHS technologies raise concerns amongst the community, and have repeatedly delayed adoption of some of the systems with identification and tracing capacities. A number of IVHS systems and strategies for appropriate introduction of such systems are considered. The ownership and use of data collected in the course of IVHS operations presents both revenue opportunities and problems, and change the basis of enforcement systems. There are growing links with such large scale data transmission facilities such as the US National Information Initiative (NII) and the equivalent massive interactive data networks developing elsewhere. The cost of making any major errors in implementing IVHS could easily make it extremely difficult to deploy further systems, and it is argued that adoption of a number of principles could safeguard the potential benefits at an acceptable social cost.