V2V SAFETY ROADMAP

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is committing substantial new resources to research in support of accelerated, widespread, near-term deployment of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) safety applications.

USDOT has developed a draft five-year research plan | HTML outlining activities required to accelerate deployment of V2V-based safety systems. The plan is being developed based on input from the automotive industry and other stakeholders, including 130 participants in a workshop held in Ypsilanti, Michigan in March 2009. The research plan will identify the interrelated research activities needed to resolve technical and policy issues.

Since 2002, USDOT has been conducting research with automotive manufacturers (Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota) to assess the feasibility of developing crash avoidance systems using vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Engineering prototypes have been developed and demonstrated with applications that address the most critical crash scenarios, which are:

Emergency Brake Light Warning
Forward Collision Warning
Intersection Movement Assist
Blind Spot and Lane Change Warning
Do Not Pass Warning
Control Loss Warning

The development of these applications was critical to understanding the functional and performance requirements for the underlying technologies, such as positioning and communications. However, additional work needs to be done to address more complex crash scenarios for head-on collision avoidance, intersection collision avoidance, pedestrian crash warning, and extending the capabilities to prevent motorcycle crashes. These capabilities could be achieved by providing V2V communication capabilities to complement other vehicle-based safety technologies.

The draft research plan consists of seven tracks that represent the major activities required to accelerate deployment of V2V-based safety systems.

Track 1 ─ Crash Scenario Framework
Track 2 ─ Interoperability
Track 3 ─ Benefits Assessment
Track 4 ─ Application Development
Track 5 ─ Driver Issues
Track 6 ─ Policy Issues
Track 7 ─ Commercial Vehicles

The draft V2V Roadmap (below) depicts the key activities in each track over the five-year period.