Safety advocates have long touted the potential of technology that allows vehicles to wirelessly communicate with each other, and now the Department of Transport is announcing new plans aimed at accelerating its adoption. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images Hide caption
Toggle caption Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Safety advocates have for years touted the potential of technology that would allow vehicles to communicate wirelessly with each other. So far, its adoption has been slow and uneven.
Now, the U.S. Department of Transportation has released a roadmap that it hopes will accelerate the adoption of the technology and save thousands of lives in the process.
“This is proven technology, and it works,” Federal Highway Administration Administrator Shailen Bhatt said at an event Friday marking the announcement of plans to deploy V2X technology on U.S. roads and highways.
V2X allows cars and trucks to exchange location information not only with the road infrastructure itself, but also with each other and even cyclists and pedestrians. Users can send and receive frequent messages, continually sharing information about speed, location and road conditions, even around corners and in poor visibility conditions such as dense fog and heavy rain.
“When all vehicles are connected, when all road users are connected, the roads become safer,” Bhatt said in an interview.
Safety advocates say V2X technology could help prevent thousands of crashes each year, as well as reduce damage by slowing collision speeds when crashes do occur, which they hope will help reduce the number of U.S. road fatalities, which have risen to more than 40,000 a year.
“This program is an important first step toward realizing the full life-saving potential of this technology,” said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jennifer Homendy.
Homendy spoke virtually from Swanton, Ohio, where the NTSB is investigating a series of crashes involving multiple trucks on the Ohio Turnpike this week, saying V2X technology could have prevented the accidents that killed four people and injured several more.
“V2X has the potential to help reverse a devastating public health crisis on our nation's roads,” Homendy said. “It could fundamentally change the transportation landscape in our country.”
Despite enthusiasm from safety advocates and federal regulators, the technology has faced challenges in adoption: During the Obama administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed making it mandatory for cars and light trucks, but the agency withdrew the idea under the Trump administration.
John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents automakers, said V2X adoption is “hindered by regulatory uncertainty.”
But he is optimistic that the new plan will help.
“This is a reset button,” Bozzella said in a statement Friday. “This deployment plan is huge. This is a critical piece of the V2X puzzle.”
The plan outlines several goals and targets for the new technology: In the short term, it aims to have V2X infrastructure on 20% of the U.S. highway system and V2X at signalized intersections in 25% of the nation's largest metropolitan areas by 2028.
V2X technology still faces several tough questions, including how to fund its deployment in critical infrastructure and how to protect connected vehicles from cyberattacks.
But safety advocates say the time for answers is past due.
“We know how to build safer cars using amazing technology that has transformed life in America,” said Dan Langenkamp, whose wife, U.S. diplomat Sarah Langenkamp, was killed by a truck while riding her bicycle in Maryland about two years ago.
“We have no choice but to move this technology forward as quickly as possible, as government officials, as manufacturers and as Americans,” Langenkamp said. “We know we have the power to save ourselves from this disaster, this crisis on our roads.”