Smart Vehicles, Intelligent Highways

Someday, new technology in our vehicles will warn us of trouble ahead.
By Sheryl Smith-Rodgers

Two or three times a month, Tommy Joyner loads up his Ford F150 pickup and hits the highway to Corpus Christi. After a day or two there, he heads north to Austin. As the executive director of a hotel management firm, the McAllen businessman knows the interstates, highways and back roads that connect his destinations. Some he avoids, most notably the busy segment of Interstate 35 that cuts through Austin.

“As a rule, I love Texas highways,” he says. “But if I can, I avoid congestion. Texas is growing so fast that all the major highways in the cities are getting bottlenecked.”

He’s right. According to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), 61 percent more cars travel Texas roads today than did in 1980. Here’s another startling statistic: in 2004, cars traveled about 442 million miles daily on state highways–the equivalent of 17,750 trips around the Earth!

With so many vehicles on the road, the probabilities for accidents increase. In 2005, 3,504 people died in motor vehicle crashes on Texas roads. So far, preliminary data for 2006 (as of last Aug. 1) indicates that 3,489 people died in crashes. That number will rise until all cases from last year have been submitted to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Where in Texas are you more likely to be involved in a car accident? According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the top five deadliest counties by no coincidence are also the state’s most populated metro areas: Harris (Houston), Dallas (Dallas), Bexar (San Antonio), Tarrant (Fort Worth) and Travis (Austin).

Makes you wish there were better, safer alternatives for traveling to your business appointments, right?

Well, what if someday new technology in our vehicles warned us about an accident just up the road...seconds after it happened? What if an onboard computer told us about weather conditions, travel hotspots and parking availability up ahead, not to mention....ahhh...risky driving habits on our part? (“Beep beep! You’re following that car too close!”) What if highways and cars could instantly exchange critical information, which would boost driver safety and faster mobility along major roadways?

What if Texas built a new interstate highway, complete with hi-tech communications and safety equipment?

“I think that’d be great,” Joyner says.

Smart roads and cars
Nearly half of the nation’s annual 43,000 traffic-related fatalities can be blamed on drivers who leave the road or pass unsafely through intersections. In Texas, speeding and roadway departure were among leading causes of fatalities in 2005. In the future, experts hope that many of those deaths will be prevented by onboard and off-road technology that will alert drivers of imminent hazards and driving errors.

Some cars already incorporate advanced safety systems. General Motors’ OnStar system automatically notifies emergency agencies when a vehicle is involved in a serious collision. And the 2007 Volvo S80 has optional features including a Blind Spot Information System, which monitors a driver’s blind spots by using cameras mounted in each side mirror. When a blind spot is occupied, an amber-colored lamp near the side mirror lights up.

On the bureaucratic level, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)–the federal agency which oversees our nation’s transit systems–several years ago established the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program. Generally, ITS refers to a broad range of communication technologies that apply to both highway infrastructure and the vehicles we drive, including commercial freight trucks.
On some interstates, you’ve probably encountered ITS technology–traffic surveillance cameras, dynamic message signs and highway advisories via specified radio stations.

Many auto makers, such as Infiniti, Volvo and Saab, have incorporated ITS into their luxury models, including satellite-based navigation systems, vision enhancement for nighttime driving, adaptive cruise control and rear obstacle detection systems.

Putting everything together
What’s next? Simply put, all the diverse and numerous components–highway and vehicular technologies–must be able to exchange information.

Toward that goal, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), a division of the USDOT, established the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) initiative. Its mission: “work toward deployment of advanced vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications that could keep vehicles from leaving the road and enhance their safe movement through intersections.”

Within a fully integrated system, roadside information centers will transmit data to vehicles, which, for instance, will warn drivers not to enter an unsafe intersection. Individually, vehicle information systems will collect and transmit data to roadside information centers, which will be linked throughout the transportation network.

Reaching that goal will take time. First, the USDOT must install several hundred thousand roadside devices across the nation. In tandem, the auto industry must equip passenger cars with compatible onboard systems, a phasing-in process that will go well beyond 2015.
As for communicating from car-to-car and car-to-information center, data will be relayed via a developing new technology called 5.9 GHz DSRC. But more on that later.

Technology leaders
Since 1992, the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio has led the way in developing ITS software and hardware through its Automation and Data Systems division. In fact, SwRI’s engineers and computer scientists developed and integrated “smart highway” systems used in Texas and Florida.

TransGuide, operational in San Antonio since 1995, currently monitors 87 miles of the city’s highways using 140 cameras. Once complete, the system will oversee 289 miles of city roads. In addition to lane control signals and speed warning signs, overhead message boards along freeways tell motorists about accidents, congestion, construction, and projected travel times. Drivers can also check out traffic conditions, including locations of major and minor accidents, on roadways at specific sites by checking TransGuide’s website (www.transguide.dot.state.tx.us).

Among current research projects, SwRI is involved with the VII initiative through its work for OmniAir Consortium Inc., a nonprofit collaboration of public and private organizations tasked with developing a certification program for the 5.9-GHz Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) devices used for communication among moving vehicles and the roadway. DSRC utilizes a radio frequency spectrum allocated by the Federal Communications Commission.

“Right now, we’re developing the standards conformance test methods for DSRC,” says Ryan D. Lamm, section manager with SwRI’s ITS department. In the future, cars will be equipped with a DSRC radio and a Global Positioning System receiver.

How beneficial will DSRC radios be? Scientists and engineers at SwRI are testing that, too. On the Institute’s onsite test track, researchers are evaluating practical applications of DSRC technology using a 2006 sport-utility vehicle and roadside receivers/transmitters.

“The near-term goal of VII benefiting the public is safety and mobility,” Lamm says, “and to reduce traffic fatalities and speed up traffic flow.”

Drive across Texas
State officials point to the same objectives when they talk about the Trans-Texas Corridor, a proposed multi-use highway network that would roughly parallel I-35 and extend 600 miles from Oklahoma to Mexico. Construction of the tollway, which could include lanes for passenger vehicles, trucks and rail, will be funded through a public-private partnership. A specific route has not yet been determined.

Currently, TxDOT and the FHWA are conducting environmental studies; Cintra-Zachry, a private consortium of engineering, construction and financial firms, is developing a master development and financial plan. Cintra, headquartered in Madrid, Spain, builds and manages tollroads around the world. Zachary Construction Corp. of San Antonio is a privately-owned construction and industrial maintenance service company.
Since the proposed TTC-35 is still in the preliminary stages, it’s too early to know specifically how ITS and VII technology will be incorporated into the highway network.

“It’s being discussed, and they are actively interested in putting that on segments of the Corridor,” says Jim Cotton, a planner with TxDOT’s Traffic Operations division. “It’d be typical ITS technology, such as surveillance cameras and communications equipment that would relay data to a central control center. There’d be dynamic message signs that would tell motorists about upcoming road hazards and conditions.”

Drive home, please
If you travel Texas roads on business as often as Tommy Joyner in McAllen, chances are you’re ready now for safer, more efficient cars and highways. In the meantime, imagine this: You’re in your car, chatting on the phone, sipping a cold soda, maybe even reviewing paperwork ... and you’re not even watching the road. That’s because the car is driving itself!

It could happen...though far in the future. Researchers at SwRI are also working on the concept of a self-driving car.

Begun in 2006, their $3.5 million project called the Southwest Safe Transport Initiative (SSTI) will advance the center’s own capabilities in autonomous vehicle technology.

Across the nation, other teams associated with universities, auto makers and defense industries are working on their own driverless prototypes as well. Spurring everyone ahead is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense. The reason: military leaders want one-third of their operational ground combat vehicles to be unmanned by 2015, which means commercial profits for manufacturers of future autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs).

To further encourage research in the field, DARPA hosts an annual competition with hefty cash prizes to winners. This year’s DARPA Urban Challenge will take place November 3 in Victorville, California. Though SwRI won’t compete this year, researchers there will continue working on the SSTI, which focuses on a Ford Explorer outfitted with a multitude of sensors and other devices that enable it to understand and negotiate obstacles within its driving range.

For now and several years down the road, you’ll just have to put up with rush-hour traffic, busy interstates and rude drivers (keep playing that classical music). But isn’t it reassuring and even amazing to know that an inordinate amount of research is being done now to make future business trips more pleasant?

“Yes, I wasn’t aware of all the work being done,” Joyner agrees, “but I’m not totally surprised either because I think Texas highways are the best I’ve ever driven. Our state highway department is the leader in trying to keep up with the growth in Texas, and they’re doing a great job.”