Vehicles and roads are talking to enable safety improvements

Some day, your car and the roadway could be in constant communication and able to suggest route changes to avoid accidents, construction and congestion; coordinate your vehicle with traffic lights, other vehicles and lane markers; and let you know where you can park. Right now, a fleet of instrumented vehicles is testing these systems on two instrumented test beds - one in Northern Virginia and one in Southwestern Virginia.

The test beds are being operated by the Connected Vehicle/Infrastructure University Transportation Center, a Tier 1 University Transportation Center operated by a consortium made up of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, the University of Virginia’s Center for Transportation Studies and Morgan State University. Robust vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-device communication will enable applications to address issues such as safety, state of repair, economic competitiveness, livable communities and environmental sustainability.

The 55 roadside units report road hazards, optimise de-icing operations, warn of congestion and emergency vehicles, and monitor pavement condition. The instrumented vehicles, which include 10 cars, a semitruck and a bus, have forward-collision, road-departure, blind-spot, lane-change and curve-speed warning systems and advanced geographic information systems. They also have sophisticated recording devices that download to the University Transportation Center so that researchers can observe in real time and accumulate data for later transportation.

Test bed development and vehicle instrumentation will be finalised by the end of the year. Research already underway includes safety and human factors of adaptable stop/yield signs; connected vehicle applications for adaptive lighting; intersection management using in-vehicle speed advisory/adaptation; eco-speed control; ‘intelligent’ awareness system for roadway workers; emergency vehicle-to-vehicle communication; connected vehicle-enabled freeway merge management; infrastructure safety assessment; infrastructure pavement assessment; and connected vehicle-infrastructure application development for addressing safety and congestion issues related to public transportation, pedestrians and bicyclists.

Future research projects include optimised routing, road hazard reporting, optimised de-icing, beacon for at-risk pedestrians and vehicle-to-vehicle communication to enhance rear signalling.

The consortium universities will conduct education and outreach programs to safely and efficiently implement successful connected vehicle and infrastructure technologies.