Car karaoke could calm road rage

Sunday Herald, The, Oct 29, 2000 by Will Peakin

IS karaoke the answer to road rage? Japanese scientists think so and are developing a way of linking cars so that they can "speak" to each other, share information about traffic jams and the weather even allow drivers to indulge in a communal singsong.

They envisage road signs and traffic lights becoming high-speed radio transmitters. These could not only link users to the internet but also put them in touch with the car in front and behind.

"You could arrange it so the people in the middle car hear the people in front through their front speakers," said Masao Nakagawa, of Keio University in Yokohama, "and the people behind through their rear speakers."

Being in radio contact with fellow drivers would make it easier for people to vent their anger, said Nakagawa, but he sees a far more entertaining use for the technology.

"We have this thing called karaoke. You could have everyone joining in," he said. "It'd be very good for keeping you awake on a long drive."

Using roadside fixtures is the idea of Hiroyuki Morikawa at the University of Tokyo, who is developing a technology with which drivers will be able to request music files on the move and receive them a few minutes later over a wireless network.

Music files such as MP3 files are large and, if demand was high, sending them over a standard cellular network would take too long.

The answer, according to Morikawa, is to combine a variety of networks. Alongside the cellular network will be ultra-fast networks that beam information from antennae on signposts or buildings onto patches only a few metres across.

A driver would send their request over the cellular network but pick it up from a spot on the fast network; liaising between the two is a program called a correspondent host.

"Say the driver requests an MP3 music file," said Morikawa. "That takes too long over the cellular network, so the request is forwarded to the correspondent host. That prefetches the MP3 file and passes it on to the hot-spotted network."

The music would then be waiting at the next hot spot along the car's route. As the car passed, it would beam the file out. Because traffic lights and roadsigns are so commonplace and within easy view of vehicles, they would make ideal information points for internet cars. Instead of tapping their fingers when drivers stop at a red light, they would be downloading Web pages, MP3 files or singing with another driver.

Karaoke is a Japanese abbreviated compound word comprising "kara" - which comes from "karappo" meaning empty - and "oke", which is the abbreviation of "okesutura", or orchestra.

Karaoke started at a snack bar in Kobe city. It is said that when a busking guitarist could not come to perform at the bar due to illness, the owner prepared some tapes of backing music and the regulars started singing along.

The Japanese are generous when they listen to people sing and can easily sing in front of others, presumably a required trait when singing with strangers on the road.

Reiko Mori, a 55-year-old taxi driver in the Shizuoka prefecture, equipped her car with a karaoke system about a year ago.

Customers can sing along free of charge and choose from a selection of 640 titles ranging from enka (traditional Japanese ballads) to rock.

The service has won her the patronage of karaoke lovers, she said.

Around 80 million cars are constantly speeding or crawling along the streets of Japan and the software engineers also plan to use them to generate highly accurate reports on road conditions.

In a test this summer, cars were programmed to transmit information on speed and whether their windscreen wipers were on or not.

The data was used to build a picture of traffic movement and weather conditions. Ultimately, more than 100 different vehicle functions could be monitored.