HAL on Wheels?

By Barbara Kiviat

The next time you're motoring through the United Arab Emirates, you might want to keep an eye on the speedometer. As part of a $125 million deal, IBM will next year start equipping tens of thousands of cars, commercial trucks and government autos with devices to alert drivers--and authorities--when vehicles are speeding. The technology, which includes a GPS and two-way communications link, is meant to stem the U.A.E.'s record of auto fatalities--38 a year per 100,000 citizens, which is more than twice that of the U.S. Privacy issues notwithstanding, with all that data government will, ostensibly, be able to better deal with congestion and plan new roads. Companies could eventually cash in too, says Michael R. Nelson, director of Internet technology and strategy at IBM. With this sort of network, insurers could spot high-risk drivers (and raise their rates), and hotels and restaurants could pipe ads into cars when they're nearby. Says Nelson: "There's real money to be made providing services to all those drivers in all those cars." --B.K.