Study: Connected cars could cause data traffic jams

The connected-car revolution will mean that vehicles are still stuck in traffic at rush hour. Only now, instead of roadways clogged with cars, the jams will involve overloaded data circuits, a new study says.

Data traffic could double in places due to the digital demands of connected cars, says the report by Machina Research. Certain cells could see a demand increase of up to 97% in 10 years.

"Connected cars, as with other (machine-to-machine) devices, don't behave like smartphones," said Matt Hatton, CEO of Machina Research in a statement. "They represent a very diverse set of challenges to operators through highly varying network traffic patterns at different times of the day."

Connected cars are envisioned as electronically talking to each other, constantly passing information about their whereabouts and speed to other cars and to infrastructure in order to avoid accidents and stay safe. They would represent a digital extension of people's completely connected lives.

But they could be huge users of data and if there are too many of them passing information back and forth in a single place, that's where the jam could come in.