Every week, I drive in my car from Pleasanton, CA to San Francisco. You get some time to think when you make that drive. An idea that has occurred to me is…

We ought to be making better use of the data our cars generate.

It could make a difference in term of driver awareness, and safety.

This notion is consistent with something I heard Tim O’Reilly describe at the Web 2.0 Summit  last year: “web squared”. Which is an odd sounding term, I’ll admit.

Odd, but important. Here’s how O’Reilly and John Battelle describe “web squared” in a white paper:

The Web is no longer a collection of static pages of HTML that describe something in the world. Increasingly, the Web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an “information shadow,” an aura of data which, when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mind bending implications. Web Squared is our way of exploring this phenomenon and giving it a name.

In the white paper, the increased use of sensors is a driver of this new trend. Sensors can track data on machinery and objects that can be turned into collective intelligence. Stanford futurist Paul Saffo sees sensors as the next great wave of technology innovation.

That’s some background for you. Now…how would this web squared collective intelligence be applied to driving?

Useful Data Goes Uncollected

As we drive, our cars produce a treasure trove of information. Speed, braking, use of windshield wipers, windshield wiper cleaning fluid usage, steering wheel turning, headlight usage…

But none of it is collected. We see it, control it, on board as we drive. But that’s it. It’s not shared with anyone else. It’s just something we do while we drive.

Turning this Data into Collective Intelligence for Better Driving

Here’s what I would love to see. We’re driving along, and quietly, various data about our cars is collected and transmitted to the cloud. This data is tabulated in real-time. What such a system is looking for variances. Points of change. Because it’s these points of change that present the biggest headaches and safety issues for drivers.

Below are several ways that the data from cars can be used for effective collective intelligence to make driving safer.

Notice the way this should work. Not an alert for conditions right where you are. After all, you’ll know about those. It’s what’s coming up ahead of you where the value of such a system would work.

In the examples above, I imagine alerts for things happening 1 mile ahead, or even 5 miles. There’d be a visual and audio system of alerts. Think of it like a Twitter stream. Of data about conditions ahead. It’d generally be quiet, unobtrusive. Unless something materially changes in the road ahead of the driver. Kind of like a Garmin GPS unit telling you to “turn right in 1 mile”.

Such a system would take full advantage of GPS. As the data is relayed from cars, their location is noted. As a person drives, her location is noted, and plotted relative to identified upcoming changes.

Collective Intelligence Works at Scale

Collective intelligence requires a reasonably high participation rate to be of value. Sporadic, spot updates don’t provide sufficient data for this desired innovation to work.

Which means these systems would need to be built into cars. On-board computers that systematically track these variables and have the ability to transmit them to satellites. Like a Garmin GPS or GM OnStar unit.

And since scale is required, you’d want common standards among the automakers – GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. No need to balkanize such a system.

It’s Just an Idea

As I noted at the start of this post, it’s just an idea for now. But it seems like a really good application of the web squared concept. I’d love to have better information on driving conditions, and there’s a wealth of data that can provide highly localized reports. We just need to be able to tap it.