Skip to main content

US to test connected vehicle technologies in six cities

The US Department of Transportation has announced the six cities where it will hold Driver Acceptance Clinics for the connected vehicle programme. The first clinic will be held in Brooklyn, MI, near Detroit, in August, while the remaining clinics will be held in Minneapolis, Orlando, FL, Blacksburg, VA, Dallas and San Francisco.
April 25, 2012 Read time: 3 mins
The 324 US Department of Transportation has announced the six cities where it will hold Driver Acceptance Clinics for the connected vehicle programme. The first clinic will be held in Brooklyn, MI, near Detroit, in August, while the remaining clinics will be held in Minneapolis, Orlando, FL, Blacksburg, VA, Dallas and San Francisco.

The Connected Vehicle Drive Clinics are part of a Department of Transportation research programme conducted by the 321 Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) and the 834 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Department is working with the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership (CAMP), a research consortium of eight automobile manufacturers, to develop technology that will help cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles avoid crashes by communicating with nearby vehicles and roadway infrastructure such as traffic signals, dangerous road segments and grade crossings. Drivers will receive safety warnings when there is a risk of a crash or other safety driving hazard.

RITA Administrator Peter Appel says, “Connected vehicle technology has the potential to address 81 per cent of all unimpaired driver related crashes. We must take a serious look at how this technology will work in the real world to create a safer transportation system.”
The clinics will take place in urban, suburban and rural communities around the country to see if the technology is accepted by a cross-section of US residents. The driver clinics will measure the acceptance by ordinary drivers of in-car collision warnings, “do not pass” alerts, warnings that a vehicle ahead has stopped suddenly and other similar safety messages. The clinics will also be used to test the performance of DSRC wireless safety technology in geographically diverse environments.

Approximately 100 local drivers will be recruited for each clinic, which will take place in controlled locations. Each clinic will include about 24 cars equipped with DSRC-based safety applications. Drivers will be evaluated by researchers as they use the vehicles in a controlled environment designed to simulate real roadways and intersections.

After the driver clinics are completed, the US Department of Transportation will deploy thousands of wirelessly-connected vehicles to test how the technology performs in a real world driving environment. The model deployment is scheduled to begin in the latter part of 2012 at a site that will be selected through an open competition. Both the driver clinics and the model deployment results will help NHTSA decide, in 2013, if the technology is sufficiently advanced enough for NHTSA to begin a series of rulemakings that could eventually require manufacturers to provide vehicle-to-vehicle communications capabilities in new vehicles.

The CAMP vehicle safety consortium includes: 278 Ford, 948 General Motors, 1683 Honda, 1684 Hyundai 5229 Kia Automotive Group, 1685 Mercedes-Benz, 838 Nissan Technical Centre North America, 1686 Toyota, and 994 Volkswagen of America.

Related Content

  • University of Michigan, Toyota partner on connected car research
    April 15, 2016
    On the heels of last week’s announcement that Toyota is putting more boots on the ground in Ann Arbor to study fully autonomous driving and advanced mobility, Toyota is to partner with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) at the Ann Arbor Connected Vehicle Test Environment (AACVTE) in an operational real-world deployment of connected vehicles and infrastructure. AACVTE is a real-world implementation of connected vehicle safety technologies being used by everyday driver
  • Europe's senior execs converge for connected car forum
    October 8, 2013
    Telematics Munich 2013, Europe's largest and most influential business conference and exhibition for the connected car industry, will host twelve hours of networking sessions across two days, 11 and 12 November. The official agenda is the result of six months of independent research, reflecting the latest trends, market activities and exciting growth in the European connected car space.
  • Investment and innovation the future of ITS
    January 31, 2012
    Cisco's Paul Brubaker, former administrator of the US Department of Transportation's (USDOT's) Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), takes a look at how the ITS sector is starting to attract the attention of major corporations and what this will mean for intelligent transportation in the coming years
  • Cars reinvented: huge new opportunities and dangers, says IDTechEx
    December 2, 2016
    The new IDTechEx report, Electric Car Technology and Forecasts 2017-2027 finds that the biggest change in cars for one hundred years is now starting. It is driven by totally new requirements and capabilities. They will cause huge new businesses to appear but some giants currently making cars and their parts will spectacularly go bankrupt. Cities will ban private cars but encourage cars as autonomous taxis and rental vehicles. Already 65 per cent of cars in China are bought by businesses. The Japanese wa