The Department of Transportation has released a plan to accelerate the deployment of a new generation of vehicle safety technology that experts believe could avert hundreds of thousands of crashes every year and improve the efficiency of the country’s roadways.
Cellular vehicle-to-everything systems—often shortened to C-V2X—will allow connected vehicles to quickly and constantly communicate with each other and with roadside infrastructure. It works at greater distances than current crash avoidance systems and around physical barriers like buildings and other cars, giving drivers more advanced notice of dangers like sudden stops ahead, another vehicle about to run a red light, and poor road conditions.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that just two C-V2X features—assisting drivers with left turns and warning them when it’s not safe to enter an intersection—could prevent as many as 615,000 crashes and save more than 1,300 lives each year. But deploying C-V2X systems at scale is a complicated endeavor that’s been more than two decades in the making, requiring carmakers, device manufacturers, and a long list of state and federal agencies to overcome a series of technical hurdles and agree to universal standards for how the systems communicate.
“This is the ultimate safety feature,” said Debra Bezzina, managing director of the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation at the University of Michigan. “A lot of us think maybe we’re on the cusp of deploying this nationally. I think we’re ready. I just wonder when the consumers are really going to find out about it and want it on their cars.”
What is C-V2X?
Most modern cars come with crash avoidance systems that rely on a combination of radar, cameras, and laser sensors to detect when other vehicles in their immediate vicinity are abruptly slowing down or veering too close for comfort. Depending on the manufacturer, they then notify drivers of the danger with a warning light, a sound, or some other form of alert.
These systems are good at detecting dangers in the immediate vicinity but they’re limited to their line of sight.
C-V2X-enabled cars will be equipped with cellular radio systems that transmit in the low-latency 5.9 GHz spectrum band that the Federal Communications Commission has reserved specifically for this purpose. Every 10th of a second, the systems send data packets with the vehicle’s location, dimensions, speed, direction of travel, and other safety information to all the other cars around them and roadside transmitters. Even without direct line-of-sight, the systems can communicate with each other from at least 300 meters away, meaning that a driver won’t just be alerted if the car in front of them suddenly stops—they could potentially be alerted if 13 semi trucks ahead of them a driver slams the brakes.
While C-V2X systems don’t require cellular networks to communicate device-to-device they operate under the same 3GPP standards that govern cellular communications. In areas where cell service is available, that means the systems can be networked to gather and communicate real-time information about larger traffic patterns.
That increased connectivity brings a host of cybersecurity and privacy challenges. To prevent the communications from being hijacked, spoofed, or repurposed into a nationwide driver tracking system, DOT says C-V2X will use a security credentialing system built on a public key infrastructure.
Each C-V2X device will receive a series of pseudonymous certificates that don’t identify the vehicle or its owner but verify to other devices that it has been validated by the proper authenticating authority. To make sure a vehicle can’t be identified and tracked using the certificates, the C-V2X device will change the pseudonymous certificate it uses every 5 minutes or 2.5 kilometers, according to DOT spokesperson Nancy Wilochka. C-V2X messages also won’t contain any identifying information about the vehicle, such as make, model, or VIN number, only its physical dimensions.
When will C-V2X be deployed?
Cars rolling off production lines don’t yet come with C-V2X installed. The DOT’s plan calls for the first C-V2X-enabled passenger vehicles to hit the market between 2029 and 2031, at which point it says 50 percent of the nation’s highway system and 40 percent of all intersections should also be equipped with C-V2X transmitters.
Some states and municipalities have already begun their deployment. Utah currently has more than 500 C-V2X transmitters at intersections and along highways and plans to add 300 more by the end of the year. Right now, they communicate exclusively with publicly owned vehicles like Utah DOT trucks, plows, and regional buses equipped with after-market transmitters. That limited reach doesn’t enable the full range of safety alerts the technology is designed for but it allows Utah to leverage another highly anticipated benefit: improving public transit efficiency.
Buses in Utah equipped with C-V2X communicate with traffic signals and if they’re running behind schedule they automatically request that red lights turn green earlier or stay green longer. One of the state’s studies showed that during peak traffic hours the signal prioritization improved bus reliability by 6 percent, which is a “huge deal” in the world of public transit, said Blaine Leonard, the transportation technology engineer for the Utah DOT.
Several more hurdles
At the moment, government agencies and device manufacturers working on C-V2X require special waivers from the FCC to deploy the technology. But by the end of the year, the agency is expected to finalize its rules for how C-V2X devices operating in the 5.9 GHz spectrum band can broadcast, creating certainty for manufacturers and paving the way for wider deployments.
In addition to standardizing how the devices broadcast, the various agencies and companies working on C-V2X also have to ensure perfect interoperability between the software that sends and processes safety signals.
Different C-V2X systems can transmit slightly different information about the same hazard. For example, A Utah C-V2X system might contain 10 different data points about a sharp curve on a highway and send it to a driver a mile before the bend while a neighboring state’s system could send a message with 8 data points and issue the warning 1.5 miles out, Leonard said. Under a $20 million federal grant, the transportation agencies in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming are working to iron out those differences and create a framework that could become a national model.
Once the hardware and software are standardized and vehicle manufacturers release the first models with built-in C-V2X transportation officials expect that consumers’ desire for safer cars will lead to a rapid expansion of connected vehicles. And the more C-V2X systems on the road, the more effective the system becomes at preventing crashes.
“Today, 150 people will die on roads in the U.S., 40,000 [people] a year, many of them through no fault of their own,” Leonard said. “That’s what motivates us, that’s what drives us, that’s what frustrates us when we can’t get it out there sooner. But we’re on a cusp here of some really big things and we’re just excited about it.”
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