FHWA to Provide an Accelerated Boost to the Deployment of Selected Safety Technologies

Through the Highways for LIFE Technology Partnerships Program, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) will enter into Cooperative Research and Development Agreements with selected safety product manufacturers and conduct Product Safety Performance Evaluations. The solicitation opens on August 6^th, 2010 and closes on October 6^th, 2010. The program anticipates selecting up to eight technologies to evaluate in a two year period.

The purpose of the Technology Partnership Program is to partner with the highway construction industry and state and local highway agencies to accelerate the adoption of promising innovations. For the 2010 solicitation the program will focus exclusively on safety and address a challenge in the deployment of new innovative technologies - the need for an independent performance and product evaluation of technologies with limited or no U.S. installations so that public agencies can make informed purchasing decisions.

To address this challenge, the program seeks to develop a process to evaluate, document, and disseminate the performance results of promising innovative highway safety technologies through a partnership with general industry and state and local highway agencies. The resulting evaluation report will provide credible, comprehensive performance information on a select group of technologies to help highway agencies make informed decisions.

Specifically, the program limits the scope to commercially available infrastructure-based safety products that address one of the following focus areas:

· Roadway departure events (with an emphasis on those occurring on two-lane rural road horizontal curves), or

· Pedestrian-related detection, warning and enhanced conspicuity, or

· Rural, unsignalized intersections

Competition under this solicitation is open to all non-profit and for-profit organizations. International companies are encouraged to apply.

The deadline for submission is October 6th, 2010. A pre-proposal teleconference is scheduled for September 2^st and September 16^th. The application requirements are posted at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hfl/tech.cfm.

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