LetMeSpeed: Speed legally, Avoid accidents

Idea: Road accidents is the number 1 cause of deaths in the United States. Many of them happen due to speeding. Sure, all the cars are designed to go beyond prescribed speed limits, but that shouldn't mean that we have right to exercise that. Frankly, I can think of very few reasons which can justify speeding, emergency medical situation being one of them. What if we could build a table of such emergencies and assign each one a code, and then expect the driver of the vehicle to enter one of these codes to get authorized for speeding for long distance. Sure, you can speed to avoid minor accidents, but that shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. All cars could be programmed to either ask for speeding authorizations once driven beyond speed limit for a threshold time (say 10 minutes), or not respect accelerator. Now each of the authorized speeding vehicles should be traceable and can be asked to provide proof for the speed request.

Reward: No more speeding related accidents, and if you have to speed for the right reason have a legal way to do it.

Bonus: Catching thieves on the road was never easier. You can deny all speed authorization request for that particular car, and you're all set. Also, if you're able to regulate speed of vehicles remotely, you can do a perfect job at traffic obedience.

GPS-STI: GPS with static traffic info

Idea: Garmin, and most other companies selling GPS devices offer traffic receivers. They come in pretty handy because they avoid traffic tie-ups by adding a traffic receiver and traffic services to your compatible GPS device. Your GPS navigator uses traffic information to minimize traffic delays on your route. The only catch here is you got to pay big bucks for this dynamic content. I claim that the amount of traffic content you really need to base your decision upon is not really dynamic. Not only that, but in case of a really dynamic event, even traffic receivers might not do the best job. So, how about storing last year's average (hour-by-hour, every 15 minutes) traffic information along with the maps on your GPS device. Using this static information, your GPS can make intelligent choices for you, and guess what you don't have to worry about your traffic receiver malfunctioning or paying for the dynamic content which you really don't need.

Reward: Since the information is static, software can do significantly better job (TSP?) at finding you the best route for the hour.

Bonus: You could also study last 5 (or 10) years traffic data and make traffic predictions. Also, based on this static information, you can avoid paths with higher statistics on accidents in certain season.