Safety

Presentation

• Need

– For forward collision warning applications, need accurate estimation of host vehicle forward path and state to determine in-path vs. out-of-path vehicles

– Single sensor systems (gyro, vision, GPS, radar) have high error and drop-out rates due to sensor limitations and degradations (weather, visibility, traffic density, road state, buildings, etc.)

– Multi-sensor systems could potentially increase accuracy, but need smart fusion methods to handle individual sensor drop-outs and incomplete/redundant/contradictory outputs

• Objectives

– Develop algorithms to fuse multiple sensors to improve accuracy and reliability of host vehicle forward path and state (as part of ACAS-FOT program)

• Status

– Multi-sensor fusion module completed and integrated into ACAS-FOT prototype vehicle (Phase 1 testing complete)

HRL Laboratories, LLC

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 29 –May 2, 2002 Long Beach, California

511 has been a successful traveler information system in the Bay Area since the telephone number was adopted and launched in 2002. Over the years, 511 has placed more emphasis on emergency planning and response as the usage of 511 has increased during emergencies, both on the phone and web. We have observed that the usage of our phone and web systems spikes in response to major incidents and emergencies.
This paper will review enhancements that have been made to 511 and 511.org in order to overcome the operating challenges during emergencies and to better serve Bay Area residents during emergencies.

Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

Image-based lane departure warning systems (LDWS) use software that analyze the images collected by a small camera to track the pavement markings and predict when a vehicle unintentionally drifts out of the travel lane.  The performance of LDWS is affected significantly by moderate to heavy rain during night-time for typical pavement marking installations.  It is expected that the performance of LDWS during these conditions can be enhanced by improving pavement marking quality.  Such improvements could include frequent replacements of conventional pavement markings or the installation of wet-reflective markings that are visible during night rainy conditions.

This paper investigates the cost-effectiveness of pavement marking improvement alternatives, taking into consideration their effects on LDWS performance.   The results indicate that some of the investigated pavement marking improvement alternatives can be justified from a benefit-cost analysis point of view depending on traffic volume, truck proportion, road segment horizontal alignment, number of related crashes at night rainy conditions, shoulder width, and LDWS market penetration.

Prasoon Sinha, PE, PTOE; Mohammed A. Hadi, Ph.D., PE; and  John R. Easterling IV, P.E., PTOE

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

A novel, engineering-based methodology is described which estimates the effectiveness and predicts the safety benefits of intelligent vehicle safety systems. The safety benefits are expressed in terms of the number of collisions that might be avoided if drivers were assisted by such systems. This methodology utilizes as input non-crash data collected from field operational tests, which characterize driver/vehicle performance in distinct safety-critical driving conflicts with and without the assistance of intelligent vehicle safety systems. Crash data are non-existent during the conduct of field operational tests that normally employ few instrumented vehicles operating for a relatively short period of time. In support of this novel methodology, dominant driving conflicts leading to rear-end, single vehicle roadway departure, and lane change collisions are defined and ranked in terms of the relative frequency of occurrence using national crash databases. Moreover, the quantification of boundaries between benign and safety-critical driving conflicts is proposed based on the 95th percentile values of driver reaction time and vehicle acceleration level exhibited in extreme collision avoidance maneuvers. Finally, the formulation and calibration of mathematical models is discussed, which estimate the probability of a crash in a safey-critical driving conflict.

Volpe National Transportation Systems Center

Presented at the 10th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, May 1-4, 2000 Boston, MA

The security of Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) proves to be vital as these systems are expanded to support regional traffic management, integrated with public safety, electronic toll collection and other systems, and become part of Homeland Security. Changes to critical ATMS subsystems by disgruntled employees, operators without permission and training to manage functions, hackers, or aggressive terrorists could create dangerous roadway situations. Password protection provides minimal security. Often times, passwords are not only lost or stolen, but also shared among employees. This paper provides insight on the security challenges faced by ATMS systems and proposes biometric fingerprint security as a viable solution. Biometric fingerprint scan technology has improved steadily over the last ten years. A discussion of finger print technology is provided along with information about the integration of this capability into existing ATMS systems.

Integrated Technology Solutions, Inc.

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 29 –May 2, 2002 Long Beach, California