If cars could talk: Fort Wayne company wants to hear what your vehicle has to say.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Around Indiana - Zoom information Systems

LISTEN TO MIKE FRITSCH talk and you might think he's living in a "Love Bug" movie. With a straight face, he discusses how cars might one day communicate with one another, or carry on conversations with mad signs.

He's not joking, either. Fritsch is president of a Fort Wayne company called Zoom information Systems, and his mission is to create hardware and software allowing vehicles to--yes--communicate with the world around them. Zoom is teaming with Boeing, the world's largest satellite maker, to create an "Intelligent Transportation System."

"It's a universal channel for transportation information," Fritsch says of the company's technology, now under development and due to be road-tested within the next couple of years.

The system will gather data from a variety of sources, including the car's existing electronics, and transmit it via wireless or satellite networks into central computers running applications designed to analyze the data. Some cars, for example, have load-leveling shocks with sensors that notice potholes and rough pavement. By transmitting that info along with GPS coordinates, the car can use Zoom's system to automatically report a pothole.

Likewise, the car's antilock braking system can automatically "talk" to the highway department when it comes across an icy patch on the road. Ultimately, a road-condition system could then transmit an "ice ahead" warning to cars approaching the slick spot. "There will be places where the highway itself, or signs, will be talking to cars," Fritsch predicts.

Using Zoom's system, authorities will be able to monitor traffic flow by analyzing speedometer and GPS data from cars crawling in rush hour. "If you...