Mercedes has announced that Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America will be taking part in the US Department of Transportation's (DOT) "model deployment" of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology.

The trial program, launched this week, is a collaborative effort between the Department, the National Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the University of Michigan. Its purpose is to evaluate the effectiveness of V2V and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication technology in reducing the number of road collisions.

The technology allows vehicles to be alerted as to the behavior of other vehicles in their area, as well as in the layout of infrastructure.

It is the largest field operational trial of its kind in the world. More than 2,800 passenger, commercial, and transit vehicles are taking part, including eight Cadillacs and Buicks supplied by GM.

Mercedes is already participating in at least one such trial in the Rhine-Main region of Germany and Palo Alto, California. In announcing that program, Mercedes called the technology the "first social network for automobiles".

For the Michigan model deployment, the carmaker's Research & Development arm installed communication devices into eight Mercedes-Benz C-300s and three Freightliner commercial trucks. The C-300s have LED strip lighting on their dashboards that light up to alert the vehicle operator of a looming crash risk. The commercial vehicles have tablets in their drivers' cabs that warn the drivers.

The trial will last for one year, during which Ann Arbor residents will drive the vehicles and researchers will collect and analyze the data. The area was selected because it is a busy college town with a variety of traffic and weather conditions. For the V21 portion of the trial, 29 devices were put up to send and receive data around 73 miles of Ann Arbor roadway.

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