Safety

Certification is commonly required for safety related applications, including those dealing
with localization. With the upcoming European satellite based localization system, the need
arises for the safety related certification of the corresponding applications and devices. The
existence of standards is mandatory for this sort of certification. For economic reasons, it
seems sensible to share knowledge and determine the application of standards across various
domains (e.g. different forms of transportation such as railways, avionics, maritime and road
transportation). To improve the tangibility of such documents, the application and utilization
of formal specifications and descriptions can help the communication process between
various stakeholders.

Institute for Traffic Safety and Automation Engineering
Technical University of Braunschweig

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

Rural roads carry approximately 40 percent of the vehicle miles traveled in the United States, yet annually they account for nearly 55 percent of the fatalities. In 2006, there were 23,339 vehicle fatalities in rural areas compared with 18,359 that occurred in urban areas. This is even more alarming considering that only 23 percent of the U.S. population resides in rural areas.(1) Further, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the fatality rate for rural crashes is more than twice the fatality rate in urban crashes. The fatality rate for rural areas in 2006 was 2.25 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT), compared with 0.93 fatalities per 100 million VMT in urban areas.

Noblis

South Carolina Department of Transportation

US DOT

Battelle Transportation

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

Over time, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has refined the
4Dimension / Real-time Control System (4D/RCS) architecture for use in Unmanned Ground
Vehicles (UGVs). This architecture, when applied to passenger or commercial vehicles, can
greatly assist in the process of saving time and lives by creating a more intelligent vehicle that
can act, or assist a human in acting, in a safer and more efficient manner. Southwest Research
Institute (SwRI®) has undertaken the Southwest Safe Transport Initiative (SSTI) aimed at
investigating the development and commercialization of vehicle autonomy as well as vehiclebased
telemetry systems to improve safety and facilitate traffic flow. This paper will discuss the
approach and lessons learned from applying the 4D/RCS architecture to the SSTI autonomous
vehicle, a 2006 Ford Explorer.

Southwest Research Institute

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

This paper introduces a low cost collision avoidance system in a Wireless environment. This system uses existing GPS technology which makes it unique as compared to other systems in existence. The system is designed to provide the driver with an audio/visual warning of an approaching obstacle or if a collision is predicted. The proposed system is unique and has many potential benefits because it is not based on expensive Radar or sensor systems as opposed to existing systems. It uses GPS technology which is cheaper and promises improvement in position measurement accuracy.

University of Central Florida

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

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