Any word on British trains being able to successfully navigate after a bit of snow, or maybe even some wet leaves, have fallen on (or near) a track ?

Is there any technology available for that ?

Right. As they say, I'll get my coat.

TranzRail, the rail provider in New Zealand has a service that auto-txts travelers for free if their train is going to be 15 minutes or more late. Not a bad service, pity I get so many texts from them...

My Ford S-MAX can already adjust cabin temperature, phone home, change radio stations/cd and a whole host of other things with spoken voice commands. Admittedly it's not 'conversational English' but even so.

Even the lowly Fiesta can be specced with such an option. Maybe IBM are used to less advanced, more bargain-basement, poorly-engineered cars from Detroit... ;o)

Some people are getting paid to make such predictions ?

I'm still wondering how "breakthroughs" like beeing able to talk to my car will help me avoid the traffic jams (maybe by yelling "you stupid car, fly now!").

BTW here we already have intelligent traffic lights, with priority for emergency vehicles.

We can have all these wonderful tech solutions for air travel but when the simple act of getting a suitcase from one end of a flight to another has the reliabilty of the space shuttle one has to wonder why they dont work that out first!

"The newly-agile vehicles will exchange information with each other and with the road infrastructure, taking corrective action where appropriate."

wont do much if you have a blowout,what'il it do move the tree/lamp post????