Why Talking Cars Will Be Good for Buses

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected at some point later this year to make a milestone decision on whether future cars in America will be required to come with "connected vehicle" technology. In layman's terms, this refers to the capacity of vehicles to communicate wirelessly with one another and with fixed infrastructure ("I’m changing lanes," "an accident just happened," "I just slammed on my brakes").

The concept conjures a futuristic world of chatty cars in which our vehicles might do a better job of interacting with each other than we do as drivers. But the prospect is not so far in the future. And some of the biggest beneficiaries may not be cars at all, but riders of public transit.