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

  • Call for new standard for parking space sizes
    February 6, 2015
    YourParkingSpace.co.uk, the UK’s car parking marketplace, is calling for the introduction of SizeMark; a new parking industry standard designed to ensure that car parking spaces are large enough to accommodate modern motor vehicles. The move is needed, it claims, after research showed that while parking spaces have remained approximately the same size over the last 60 years, some vehicle models have grown by more than 20 per cent in width. Backed up by a recent survey by the AA, the result revealed that
  • NHTSA studies hacking risks to automated vehicles
    May 21, 2013
    A report by Bloomberg says that rising hacking risks to drivers as their cars become increasingly powered by and connected to computers have prompted the US’s auto-safety regulator to start a new office focusing on the threat. “These interconnected electronics systems are creating opportunities to improve vehicle safety and reliability, but are also creating new and different safety and cybersecurity risks,” David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said at a recent Senat
  • euroFOT study demonstrates benefits of driver assistance systems
    June 26, 2012
    Today, the euroFOT consortium published the findings of a four-year study focused on the impact of driver assistance systems in the Europe. The €22 million (US$27.5 million) European Field Operational Test (euroFOT) project which began in June 2008 and involved 28 companies and organisations, was led by Aria Etemad from Ford’s European Research Centre in Aachen, Germany. The study looked at existing technologies and their potential to both enhance safety and reduce environmental impact. euroFOT also reveale
  • Nema releases comms standard for connected vehicles
    February 10, 2025
    US body says it will ensure better communication for wireless safety messages