Despite the many active and passive safety features of modern vehicles traffic accidents are still an everyday fact of life. Even with today's safety features, statistics show that steady streams of crashes continue to occur. Think of the numbers, over 15 million crashes with almost six million of those incidents resulting in property damage or personal injury and the worst number of all, over 42 thousand fatalities annually. It's staggering! The compelling factor is that many of these accidents could have potentially been prevented if the drivers knew a crash was about to happen. Honestly, if pre crash warnings were available, that is if vehicles could see and talk with one another and then alert the driver of impending danger, many crashes could be avoided or the severity could be significantly reduced. No way you say, well the U.S. Department of Transportation and five major automotive manufacturers got together and said, "Yes." There is a way to develop a next generation vehicle to vehicle communicate based safety system. A system that will let vehicles talk and interact with each other and do it cost effectively. The overall project is funded by the USDOT under a cooperative agreement with Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota working as a consortium. Together they're working on the Vehicle Safety Communications or VSC-A Project. One of the objectives of this project is the development of cooperative safety systems based on vehicle to vehicle communication in real time. And they're doing it using a technology very similar to WIFI.
In 1999 the Federal Communication Commission allocated a portion of the frequency band for automotive use, utilizing a protocol called Dedicated Short Range Communications. We call it DSRC for short. When DSRC is combined with GPS the result is a low cost V2V communications system that provides a 360 degree view of other similarly equipped V2Vvehicles within range. Now, to make all this work, all the vehicles need to speak the same language, now that is called interoperability. In short by adhering to the interface standards, manufacturers can develop different types of vehicles systems and alerts, while allowing the vehicles to communicate with each other in exactly the same way.
The beauty is that the base system is transparent to the driver unless an unsafe situation occurs. Nothing happens unless there's potential trouble. The vehicle to vehicle communication system enables a vehicle to continually keep an eye on the position and speed of other vehicles in the area. That's an especially important feature when a driver cannot spot impending danger or when its tough to know that an unsafe situation is unfolding. Let's take a look at this system in action.
Hadasan could you explain to us how Blind Spot Warning works? "Yes, there is a car in my left blind spot but I cannot see the car with my rear view mirrors, but the car tells me of the presence of that vehicle using the v to v technologies. As I try to change my lane the collision threat is very clear, so at that time the system warns me of the potential for collision with the vehicle in my blind spot." So just to make sure I understand you, I can't see the car in my blind spot with either mirror but the system knows that the vehicle is there. So if I try to change lanes I'm going to get a warning? "Yes."
This emerging vehicle to vehicle technology allows vehicles to see and talk to other vehicles that use the same technology. Exchanging critical information that can help to reduce collision risk. This technology also has the vast potential to enhance the capability of vehicle based safety systems. As a matter of fact these demonstrations just scratch the surface of the safety applications that are possible using this technology. What do you say we give them a demonstration.
Lets look at another of the applications developed using the V2V technology as part of this project. Forward Collision Warning is an application born from this technology that can help the driver avoid a rear end collision if another vehicle ahead of them is stopped or traveling radically slower. Here we have a stopped vehicle ahead of us in our lane of travel and we are approaching. When I approach that stopped vehicle I get a series on my dashboard display that goes from green to amber to a warning light. The driver's seat vibrates trying to put my attention back on the roadway so that I can avoid a crash with the vehicle that is stopped in my lane.
As you can see we're out on the roadway to demonstrate another possible systematic application that has to do with hazardous roadway events that can be communicated with V2V technology. Electronic Emergency Break Lights, EEBL is an application that provides notification to the driver when a vehicle that we can't even see ahead is breaking hard for some reason.
Sue, could you give us a rundown of what's about to happen with the EEBL application? "Of course Pete, we're on the roadway and there is another vehicle ahead of us which is also equipped with V2V safety system. The driver in that vehicle encounters a situation that he has to break very hard for. Meanwhile, the system in his vehicle broadcasts a message with the hard break status on to nearby vehicles. Our V2V safety system received the message and provides a warning to us well before we see the brake light turn on from our immediate ahead vehicle." So let me make sure I understand you, even though I can't see the vehicle in front of me, I'm still going to be notified that that vehicle is breaking hard? "That is correct."
The vehicle to vehicle system standard can also be applied to collision avoidance with crossing traffic, which is really cool. This application called Intersection Movement Assist is designed to warn the driver when it's not safe to enter an intersection. Now I'm sure we've all experienced trying to edge into traffic with our vision blocked. It can get a little scary not knowing whether there's another vehicle in our path. So Kylie, give us an example of Intersection Movement Assist. "IMA can work in a variety of situations, one we have here is approaching a stop sign and we want to make a turn onto a high speed road. We want to make a left turn but there's something blocking our view from oncoming vehicles to the right so we don't know if it's safe to pull out. IMA can detect that vehicles are approaching and give you a warning in enough time to prevent you from pulling out and getting into an accident." Wow that's very impressive!
Now Joe I know you've been working on the Do Not Pass Warning application for some time so let me ask you, how does this application making driving safer? "Well using V2V technology the system activates when it detects your following a slower moving vehicle. It then continually scans the road ahead looking for vehicles in the drivers intended passing zone. If a vehicle is detected in the passing zone information is provided to the driver in the form of a visual alert, to inform the driver that the passing situation is potentially unsafe. If the driver attempts to move forward with the passing maneuver and change lanes a visual and audible alert is provided to the driver to help the driver stop the attempted passing maneuver." So I'm going to get a warning before I even attempt to leave my lane to pass this vehicle in front of me? "The hope here is that we will prevent the two types of crashes, the oncoming crashes and the road exit crashes by preventing the situation from ever occurring in the first place."
So you certainly wonder what challenges still face vehicle to vehicle technology. And that is definitely a good question. The answer is, continued work is needed to move from development and testing to a point when vehicle to vehicle technology is an industry wide standard that all manufacturers can use. Frankly, it is a challenge that is not complete but it is getting much closer to reality as you've seen in some of these demonstrations.
Also a lot of work needs to be done after the fact to bring this system to market, standards much be completed, the security framework finalized and deployment strategies completed. The United States Department of Transportation, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota all believe that developing vehicle to vehicle communications technology using Dedicated Short Range Communication is an important first step in providing a new generation of driver assistance and safety.