Safety

Rural roads carry approximately 40 percent of the vehicle-miles traveled in the United
States, yet annually account for nearly 55 percent of the fatalities.  To address the
challenges of rural safety, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) kicked-off
the Rural Safety Initiative in February 2008.  The focus of the Rural Safety Initiative is to
highlight available options to help reduce fatalities and injuries on rural roads.   

One element of the Rural Safety Initiative is the Rural Safety Innovation Program (RSIP).  
The goal of the RSIP is to improve rural road safety by assisting rural communities in
addressing highway safety problems and by providing rural communities the opportunity
to compete for project funding to address these problems.  This paper provides an
overview and current status of the individual Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)
projects funded through the RSIP.

United States Department of Transportation

Noblis

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

This study tried to evaluate freeway cruise speed patterns of crash-involved drivers (26
drivers) and crash-not-involved drivers (141 drivers) from longitudinally observed GPS-
speed data (a six-month period).  The empirical investigation showed that drivers with crash
histories much frequently changed their driving speeds than drivers without any crash history
did, but statistical significance was not proved yet, due to the small sample size and large
variance in speed data.  However, the advance data collection system uniquely used in this
study could be worthy to be emphasized.  This study introduced the in-vehicle monitoring
device containing GPS and wireless mobile communication systems to collect more detailed
driving data, which would provide much information on driving patterns for both temporal
and spatial investigations.

Virginia Department of Transportation

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has implemented a fog detection and
warning system on Highway 99 near Fresno.  The entire central valley region is susceptible to
Tule fog, which can reduce visibility tremendously, sometimes to near zero.  This area has
experience numerous multiple vehicle crashes because of the fog, most recently in 2007, when a 108 car pile-up caused two deaths and nearly 40 injuries, and closed the highway for more than twelve hours.  The fog detection system, which was installed last winter, uses speed and visibility detectors to assess road conditions, traffic management software to process data and control the field devices, and changeable message signs to provide information to the traveling public.

ICx Transportation Group

California Department of Transportation District 6

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

We present research in progress to develop an “Aware” vehicle concept to improve operator
performance, mobility and safety.  The Aware Vehicle project, in part, seeks to develop
systems that communicate with the infrastructure, monitor the operating environment and
detect operator state.  A further component of this system is informational feedback to the
driver that will inform the driver of their relative wellbeing, enhancing their awareness of the
operating environment, thus enhancing their capacity to self-regulate and improve their
driving.  Our approach emphasizes context aware technologies and their possible capacity to
monitor driver performance, manage workload, and motivate safe driving behaviors of
passenger car and commercial drivers across the lifespan are discussed. We conclude with
questions and implications for future research and practice.

MIT AgeLab & New England University Transportation Center

Paper submitted for publication and presentation at the ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting and Exposition

In response to emergencies, a recurring “lesson learned” is the failure of responding authorities to maintain a common operating picture and deploy interoperable systems and technologies. Several after action reports for recent events in the Gulf Coast region found that response and recovery activities were hampered due to the ineffective flow of information between key stakeholders. While recent revisions to the National Incident Management System emphasize the need for information management and interoperable communications during emergency response, no systems architecture or systems engineering process has been defined to address this critical need. Efforts to achieve interoperability or develop effective common operating pictures will continue to be problematic without the use of an Emergency Management System Architecture and a Systems Engineering process.

FHWA

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, May 3-5, 2010, Houston, Texas