Traffic Deaths and Delays on Highways

Our highway system offers some of the best opportunities to realize at least some of the idyllic dreams many Americans in the 1960's shared about the future.

If you can't yet buy your George Jetson-style flying car, shouldn't you at least have a vehicle that can drive itself at highway speeds, letting you read or take a nap until you arrive at your destination?

Imagine - no traffic deaths, no traffic jams, consistently timely arrivals, the end of road rage, and massive fuel savings!

These facts are confusing and puzzling because they can't logically agree:

• The Vietnam Memorial commemorates the loss of 58,195 Americans over the 17 years between 1956 and 1973.


• Motor vehicle fatalities constitute the overwhelming majority of US accidental deaths. Traffic accidents kill more than 40,000 Americans each year. Annual fatalities were significantly higher during the Vietnam years - before the advent of seat belts and more strict drunk driving laws.
  
  Even so, projecting just today's more conservative vehicular mortality rates, we can reasonably expect future motor vehicle accidents to kill more than 10 times as many Americans as the Vietnam War over a similar period.
  See here:
  http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.html


• There is no national motor vehicle accident memorial in the United States.

As for delays, there is no point in reviewing statistics on traffic jams. Just ask yourself how much of your personal productivity and quality of life has been squandered, trapped in traffic snarls traveling betweeen 0 and 30 mph on highways intended for speeds of 55 mph or greater.

Multiply your waste and misery quotient by 200 million licensed US drivers and we have plenty of motivation to demand at least the option of hands-free driving on public highways.

Practically All Highway Deaths Are Preventable

Would it surprise you to know that the vast majority of deaths, wasted hours and repression of the pursuit of happiness attributable to bad motor vehicle experience could be eliminated by applying technology we have at our disposal today? True fact.

Q: Why, then, don't we implement such great technology and use it to save the lives of scores of thousands and improve the life quality for hundreds of millions of Americans?

A: According to at least one anonymous researcher in the automotive automation industry, it is not due to technology constraints, but because elected officials can't agree who's brother-in-law should get the contracts.

Suggested Internet searches:

• Intelligent Transportation Systems


• National Automated Highway System Research Program
  (the program's concepts were proven in San Diego, CA, 1997)


• Vehicle Highway Automation

Here's how to fix interstate traffic deaths and delays:

We have seen races between completely automated vehicles that run across roadless desert terrain and urban settings. See here: http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

Why can't that technology (partially paid for by taxpayers) be applied to vehicles that operate on public highways?

Yes, Virginia, it IS possible with currently available technology. See here:
Intelligent Transportation Society of America, http://www.itsa.org/

A combination of these and other existing technologies could allow hands-free passenger travel on public highways:

• "Smart," "dynamic," or "active" cruise control lets a vehicle maintain a reasonable speed while preventing collision with the vehicle ahead (Lexus, BMW, et al). A line of these vehicles could create an automated passenger car convoy traveling without swerving from lane to lane or repeatedly passing each other, preventing accidents and saving fuel.


• Global Positioning Systems can monitor the precise location of each vehicle in a convoy to ensure its proper location in the lane.


• Convoy groups may be defined to reduce the number of queries and reporting transactions with the GPS, data being shared, as needed or desired, among convoys or convoy members.


• Simple onboard routing logic resident in each vehicle computer could be coupled with short-range radio trasnmissions to constantly update convoy information as vehicles join or leave a convoy.


• Vehicle computers can monitor GPS position and exit numbers to notify the driver/passenger in a convoy when they are about to arrive at their exit and should prepare to resume navigational control. Diversions for sight-seeing, gas, food, lodging, etc. could be managed on-the-fly.


• OnStar technology could be used to help manage convoys in various ways, including using driver's verbal conveyance of visual observations to help assess and respond to unusual conditions in a convoy, its vehicles, and the road or environment.


• Road signs, guardrails (and with a little more development in nanotechnology, even lane striping paint) could be equipped with radio frequency identification tags and other data or capability to help monitor passing convoys and vehicles, providing precise dimensional data to ensure proper vehicle positioning on the road.

Considering these capabilities, plus other advancements like those employed with automated Mars rovers, there is no reason we should not expect to exploit all kinds of existing technology (especially those technologies paid for by taxpayers) to make automated, hands-free highway driving available to the public.