[blackeneth]

We build cell towers everywhere. It’s not a stretch that we could build telemetry towers everywhere. The main problem is an economic chicken-and-egg problem: need to invest in towers before cars will be built. The one advantage is that one can be assured of success in developing a self-driving road system.

Now if we could reuse cell tower signals, the telemetry system is already in place. Cell phone operators keep the location of their cell towers secret, but with some persuasion ($$$) would reveal their coordinates.

[fbender]

I see a huge risk for manipulation and spoofing. You‘ll have to establish some kind of trust if you want to rely on beacon data (from whatever source) for navigation and safety. Just imagine that someone spoofs a signal that triggers autonomous cars to emergency break – depending on road conditions and/or if there are non-autonomous cars as well, an attacker can create some serious damage, injury, and even death.

Given the existence of spoofed base stations (stingrays) among other reasons, a PKI-based solution may not be sufficiently safe. So you‘d have to overlay beacon data with sensors, at which point it’s questionable if there‘s a significant added benefit.