General Motors is partnering with the US Department of Transportation, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the University of Michigan in a pilot program to gauge the effectiveness of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications technology in preventing car crashes.
The company is supplying a fleet of eight cars consisting of Buicks and Cadillacs to be among the passenger and commercial vehicles taking part in the US Department of Transportation's Connected Vehicle Safety Pilot Model Deployment Program.
The GM cars will be equipped with V2V apparatus, and will collect data to be analyzed by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, which is directing the program's operations. Towards the end of 2013 the NHTSA will examine the research findings.
GM says that the program could result in the technologies in question entering wide use by the end of the decade.
"Participating in this program will help GM and our research partners gain a more accurate, detailed understanding of V2V and V2I's potential safety benefits," Nady Boules, global research and development director of the GM's Electrical and Control Systems Research Lab, said in a statement. "It is essential that common standards and security framework be established for V2V and V2I technologies so that vehicles from different automakers can communicate and interoperate with each other in a consistent manner."
V2V technology allows vehicles to communicate information such as their location, their speed and their direction of travel to each other. V2I technology alerts vehicles as to such things as traffic signals and road conditions. It is hoped that.
The transportation department selected Ann Arbor, Michigan for the V2I portion of the program, because of its diverse road, traffic, and weather conditions. The department installed 29 devices along 73 miles of Ann Arbor roadway.
"This program will help GM determine a timeline for introducing V2V technology on our vehicles, globally, in the second half of this decade," said Hariharan Krishnan, a member of GM's research team. "It will take approximately another five years of market penetration for customers to truly benefit from the technology. Ultimately, V2V and V2I technologies stand to improve traffic safety and efficiency for many drivers."
A GM-supplied video on the technology can be viewed here:
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