Monday, October 17, 2011

IEEE Says Intelligent Transportation Systems Could Eliminate 90% of Auto Crashes


Experts at IEEE say that 90% of all car crashes could be eliminated if existing intelligent transportation technologies were implemented in vehicles and roads. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) include electronics and computing technologies such as sensors to detect drowsy drivers, lane departure warning systems, collision avoidance systems and automatic braking.

The recent IEEE Conference on ITS in Washington, DC, provided a venue for researchers to discuss their advanced research and ground-breaking innovations. For example, Teruo Higashino, professor of information networking at Osaka University in Japan, has focused on applying wireless networking technology for vehicle-to-vehicle communication to help detect dangerous vehicles on the road and warn nearby drivers. Learn more at the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) website.

Via a consortium of five auto manufacturers working with U.S. Department of Transportation, the Vehicle Safety Communications—Applications (VSC-A) project is working to develop the application of vehicle to vehicle communications to provide precrash warnings to drivers, thereby avoiding many crashes or reducing the severity of collisions. Watch DOT’s video about vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems.

Image courtesy U.S. Department of Transportation