Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Requirement Proposed by NHTSA to Prevent Accidents

Federal highway safety officials have proposed a new rule that would require automakers to equip all newly manufactured passenger cars with “vehicle-to-vehicle” communication safety technologies, which is intended to prevent or mitigate the severity of auto accidents. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (PDF) on December 13, calling for the use of connected vehicle technologies that could coordinate a multitude of crash avoidance applications to prevent hundreds of thousands of automobile crashes every year.

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) devices are designed to use dedicated short range communications (DSRC) to transmit data such as location, direction, speed, and other variables to nearby vehicles. The software is designed to update this type of data and broadcast it to surrounding vehicles as frequently as ten times per second. By transmitting the data to surrounding vehicles, V2V-equipped vehicles can identify risks and provide warnings to other vehicles to avoid crashes.

The software will be designed with enhanced abilities to recognize and avoid crash situations, such as lane passing on a two-lane road to prevent head-on-collisions. The software would give vehicles the ability to recognize another vehicle is within range and which direction it is headed, and could warn drivers of upcoming crash obstacles hundreds of yards away.

Full implementation would be expected two years from September 1, 2017, which is the NHTSA expects to propose a final rule.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx first announced the agency’s plan to further advance V2V technology in February 2014. After the initial announcement, the NHTSA issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in August 2014, to review public comment and approval and to give notice to the technology industry that may have been able to offer assistance in design.

Secretary Foxx stated in a December 13 press release that the use of V2V technology is combination with other automated vehicle technologies such as Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) could prevent hundreds of thousands of crashes every year and mitigate the severity of injuries from those crashes.

“We are carrying the ball as far as we can to realize the potential of transportation technology to save lives,” Foxx said in the press release. “This long promised V2V rule is the next step in that progression. Once deployed, V2V will provide 360-degree situational awareness on the road and will help us enhance vehicle safety.”

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is currently working on a guidance for vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology that is very similar to V2V, but allows the vehicle software to “talk” to roadway infrastructure such as traffic lights, stop signs and work zones to improve work zone safety, intersection crashes and traffic congestion.

According to NHTSA data, more than 72,000 crashes involving drowsy drivers were recorded by police between 2009 and 2013. Data from the National Transportation Safety Board stated that in 2015, statistics indicated 1 in 10 highway deaths were the result of distracted driving, many of which could have been prevented through automated safety technologies.

The NHTSA has warned that roughly 94% of all vehicle crashes occur from human error with some of the highest contributing errors being drowsy driving and distracted driving from smartphone use. Through the use of V2V and several other automated safety technologies the NHTSA hopes to prevent numerous auto accidents that result from human error.