That guy with the Beats headphones cranked up to 11 might have another tool to avoid the long arm of Darwin. It's called WiFi-Honk and the name says it all.
The app, developed by students at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, is for both drivers and pedestrians, and combines their smartphone's WiFi, GPS, accelerometer, and gyroscope to determine their exact locations. If their paths are on a collision course, the guy punishing his eardrums to Die Antwoord gets an audio, visual, and tactile alert.
Up until now, getting a solid WiFi connection quick enough for this kind of rapid-fire alert was impossible at anything over five or 10 mph. But the latest breed of WiFi beacons can ping devices every 100 milliseconds, and when combined with the algorithm the students developed for WiFi-Honk, they can amp it up or slow it down as needed.
Naturally, they're dealing with the issue of unnecessary alerts, but the next step is not requiring an app at all. Every new smartphone has WiFi and cars are getting it too, so it's no surprise that GM has been working on a similar system to link the two since 2012.