Highways England to trial wirelessly connected vehicles and driverless cars

Highways England (HE) is to invest US$213.5 million (£150 million) on new technology, including trials of driverless car technology on motorways. As part of its innovation strategy, HE may introduce a connected corridor, or ‘wi-fi road’, which could see cars and infrastructure wirelessly connected, with drivers receiving news of advanced road closures or congestion warnings. The strategy also includes trialling radar technology on motorways and in tunnels to improve the way breakdowns are detected. A
April 11, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
8101 Highways England (HE) is to invest US$213.5 million (£150 million) on new technology, including trials of driverless car technology on motorways.

As part of its innovation strategy, HE may introduce a connected corridor, or ‘wi-fi road’, which could see cars and infrastructure wirelessly connected, with drivers receiving news of advanced road closures or congestion warnings. The strategy also includes trialling radar technology on motorways and in tunnels to improve the way breakdowns are detected.

As part of the strategy, HE will also join a trial that would see journey information sent wirelessly to specially adapted vehicles on the A2/M2 between London and Kent.

It also plans to ensure that trials are being undertaken for autonomous vehicles on motorways by the end of next year, to start to collect real world data on performance and potential impacts on capacity and operations.

The strategy also includes trialling radar technology on motorways and in tunnels to improve breakdown detection, as well as the possibility of improving the signalling of junctions on motorways to increase traffic flows and the development of ‘expressways’ on A-roads to encourage more free-flowing traffic.

Highways England chief executive Jim O’Sullivan said: “We’re committed to using innovation to benefit the millions of journeys made on England’s Strategic Road Network today and in the future. We will work with our partners in the supply chain, technology specialists and the automotive industry to trial new technologies that will help make journeys on our roads safer, more reliable and better informed.

“This will involve supporting trials of better connected and autonomous vehicles on our motorways by the end of next year, testing radar technology to better detect breakdowns, and trialling fuel price signs on the M5 between Bristol and Exeter.”
Networking & Communication Systems Urban Traffic Control Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Airbiquity adds Inrix and Parkopedia to its connected car content
    August 22, 2014
    US-based connected car services supplier, Airbiquity is to integrate two industry-leading geo-aware content providers into its Choreo connected car services delivery platform, making Inrix’s traffic information and driver services and the parking information services of Parkopedia available to Airbiquity’s automotive OEM customers deploying the its Driver Experience infotainment service. Leveraging the Airbiquity content portfolio, automotive OEMs can now easily configure both INRIX traffic and Parkopedia p
    Read More
  • Telstra and Cohda Wireless conduct first Australian V2P technology trial
    July 28, 2017
    Telstra, in partnership with Cohda Wireless, has successfully conducted Australia’s first test of vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) technology over a mobile network in South Australia. The trial demonstrated vehicles interacting directly with pedestrians’ and cyclists’ mobile phones providing early-warning collision detection and alerts via an application installed on the phones. The technology was tested using some common scenarios that occur every day in Australia, such as a car and a cyclist approaching a blin
    Read More
  • Plug and play approach unifies workzone ITS
    July 18, 2012
    Caltrans District 7 is finalising a ConOps document which will detail a plug-and-play to work zone ITS operation. The organisation's Allen Z. Chen elaborates. Before August is out, on current planning, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) District 7 (which covers Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, with a combined population of close to 11 million people) intends to have finalised a Concept of Operations (ConOps) document dealing with Work Zone Transportation Management Systems (WZTMS). The
    Read More
  • Camera technology a flexible and cost-effective option
    June 7, 2012
    Perceptions of machine vision being an expensive solution are being challenged by developments in both core technologies and ancillaries. Here, Jason Barnes and David Crawford look at the latest developments in the sector. A notable aspect of machine vision is the flexibility it offers in terms of how and how much data is passed around a network. With smart cameras, processing capabilities at the front end mean that only that which is valid need be communicated back to a central processor of any descripti
    Read More

Highlighted Content