The U.S. Department of Transportation Developed a national road safety plan [PDF] This allows vehicles to communicate with each other. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hopes that the widespread adoption of V2X (vehicle-to-everything) technology will strengthen “our efforts to pursue a comprehensive approach to reducing road fatalities to zero.” Estimated value Last year, 40,990 people died in car accidents.
V2X enables vehicles to communicate not only with each other, but also with pedestrians, cyclists, other road users and infrastructure along the road, sharing information such as position, speed and road conditions, even around curves, in dense fog and other poor visibility conditions. NPR Note.
A nationwide rollout will require a suite of mobile, vehicle-mounted and roadside technologies that can communicate efficiently and securely while protecting people’s personal information, the Department of Transportation said in its National V2X Deployment Plan. The department said small-scale deployments of V2X across the country have demonstrated safety benefits. Safety advocates say the technology could prevent hundreds of thousands of crashes and mitigate the severity of crashes by reducing impact speeds.
The Department of Transportation’s planning timeline extends to 2036, at which point it expects V2X to be fully deployed across the entire U.S. highway system, 85% of signalized intersections in 75 major metropolitan areas to be enabled with the technology, and 20 vehicle models to be V2X-enabled. In the short term, the department aims to have V2X technology deployed on 20% of the U.S. highway system and 25% of signalized intersections in major metropolitan areas by 2028.
This won’t be an easy task, as it will require the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, including the Federal Communications Commission, which the Department of Transportation says must decide on rules for frequency allocation. Suppliers to automakers (who make V2X-enabled parts), freight carriers, and app developers are also involved in the Department of Transportation’s initiative.
There are concerns, including cybersecurity and how to cover the costs of implementing the technology (though the Federal Highway Administration recently announced nearly $60 million in grant funding). V2X relatedBut V2X has the potential to prevent thousands of deaths and serious injuries.
“Today, the Department of Transportation reached a critical milestone in developing a national plan for an industry that has the power to save lives and transform the way people get around,” said Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. It said in a statement“The Department recognizes the potential safety benefits of V2X and this plan will bring us closer to nationwide deployment of this technology.”
“This plan marks an important first step toward realizing the full life-saving potential of this technology, which could prevent up to 615,000 crashes,” said National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy. The NTSB has concluded that the introduction of V2X has prevented many fatal crashes over the past few decades. Homendy pointed outThe authorities are Since 1995.
As you might expect, V2X is by no means a new concept: several automakers, including Audi, Toyota and Volkswagen, have been working for years on ways to get their cars to communicate with each other and with city infrastructure, a key part of which will play a role in autonomous driving.
Under the Obama administration, there was an effort to make vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications a required feature for new cars, but under the Trump administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration halted the plan.
John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an automaker trade group, said “regulatory uncertainty” has slowed the rollout of V2X. “This is the reset button,” he added. NPR“This deployment plan is significant. It’s a critical piece of the V2X puzzle.”
