That H3 Hummer hugging your driver-side door on the freeway may intimidate you, but a new project by researchers at UCLA would at least allow the two of you to break the ice. Called "CarTorrent," the system is themed after the popular online peer-to-peer downloading protocol BitTorrent, which allows computers to connect and share files.

The most obvious use for CarTorrent would be to quickly and easily exchange traffic information between cars. Two other types of information to be shared would be content distribution and urban surveillance. The technology would utilize short-range wireless technology to connect cars within 100 to 300 meters of each other (that's about 328 to 984 feet, for those of you who are troubled by the metric system).

The UCLA team has been working on this concept for four years now, but just recently started releasing its research. Toyota and BMW have expressed interest in bringing the technology to the street. [Guardian via Gizmodo]

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