What is the SARTE project? Suppose that you are on the highway and your car is equipped with the SARTE system. Then, you find a SARTE lead truck in front of you, running at 90 mph (145 km/h). What you can do, is you can go behind the truck and enable the system. It will automatically drive your car very close to the truck, and it will follow it all the way, until you approach your destination and you decide to leave (un-dock from the SARTE). Similarly, other cars come behind yours, until a long road train with vehicles is performed. The truck is driven by a professional driver with additional training and multiple safety systems installed, such as alcohol measuring and cameras.
What's the point to all this? Well, first of all, the fuel economy and the effect on the environment. Each car slip-streams due to the car in front of it, and the first car slip streams due to the truck. The air resistance on the car that slip-streams is dramatically reduced, so it needs to provide less power to overcome this, thus it needs less fuel and provides less CO2. Moreover, the car drives itself, so you can read the newspaper, or watch tv, or work with your laptop while you're on your way... The system needs another 10 years or so to become widely available. Until then, drive safe. Visit the SARTE project website for more info.
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