US DOT Proposal Sees Future Cars Talking To Each Other

The US Department of Transportation, hand in hand with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decides the rules of the road, including the proposal of new rules for building automobiles that will drive on said road. On that note, the DOT has put forth a new proposal that asks manufacturers to adopt a universal system for wireless communication between vehicles on the road, and adopt it for all future vehicles. The proposal includes using that communication between vehicles to help circumvent crashes by alerting both drivers and the vehicles’ guidance mechanisms when a crash is likely or there are adverse driving conditions like faulty equipment, allowing both parties more time than usual to react to an impending crash and prevent it from happening.

According to Department of Transportation head Anthony Foxx, a vehicle to vehicle communication system would not only be useful for human drivers, but may help robots out as well, who would be more aware of other vehicles around them and the intentions of those vehicles, or if said vehicles may be human-driven. Foxx says that the new system could potentially grant any car and driver with a full, 360-degree awareness of their environment and other vehicles in it, as well as other factors like pedestrians entering a turner’s blindspot, or areas where obstacles or other vehicles may block a driver’s view of the stretch of road that they intend to either get onto or cross over.

The Department of Transportation’s proposed guideline for the successful development and implementation of a vehicle to vehicle wireless communication standard includes four parts, as well as measurable goals. The first is to analyze crash scenarios and determine critical data. From there, the plan is to figure out the potential benefits of such a plan and whether it should become law. If that step sees the proposal become a law, the next step will be to actually develop the system and implement it in new cars in such a way that consumers have a clear benefit to look to as a motivation to buy some of the earliest models to feature the new system. The goals are to establish a protocol for wireless communications and vehicle safety, and on a more lofty note, to mitigate up to 80 percent of crashes that don’t involve impaired drivers.