Smart car-to-car communication will one day make traffic jams obsolete and significantly improve road safety. That is the vision of several major car makers who recently presented the technology under realistic driving conditions at a test track in Germany.

Several cars, motorcycles and a truck could be seen communicating with each other at the Opel test track in Dudenhofen Germany based on wireless WLAN technology.

In principle, the technology works as follows: Car A is driving several kilometres ahead and sends information about an upcoming obstacle to car B allowing the driver to choose an alternative route or to slow down.

An important milestone was taken earlier this year when the European Commission made available an EU-wide frequency band.

Some 30 major car makers and other partners are grouped in the Car2 Car Communication Consortium aimed at defining a uniform standard for the communication technology between vehicles and road infrastructure.

The European Union is supporting the project, hoping to improve road safety and reduce traffic jams. The technology could be especially effective when it comes to upcoming vehicle congestion, accidents or icy roads.

Traffic management centres can also inform drivers about a sudden road closure, the alternative route to take or speed limits. The information is sent to a transmitter detector along the respective road, which then passes it on to the vehicles driving by.

"Getting critical messages through quickly and accurately is a must for road safety," says European Union Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding, pointing out that the time Europeans spend in traffic jams could cost some 80 billion euros (102 billion euros) by 2010 in lost working hours.

The EU-wide frequency in the 30 MHz spectrum in the 5.9 Gigahertz (GHz) band will be allocated in early 2009 by national authorities across Europe. This is in line with steps already taken in the United States and Japan, opening up an important milestone for the technology.