Automated cars take to the road on I-395 and set off a new industry endeavor for the state.
By Lynn Norusis
On a crisp October day leaders of Northern Virginia transportation departments, Sen. Mark Warner and a dozen or so members of the media gathered to look at a car and hear about a driving experience on the I-395 express lanes. As two Cadillac SUVs pulled up and Sen. Warner disembarked, he looked elated as he stepped out of the car and greeted the press. What made this arduous drive down the highway worth commemorating? The fact that it wasn’t arduous at all because the cars were equipped with hands-off and connected technology, a future Sen. Warner says will be the next disruptive technology that will save fuel, save lives and move us along the roads more quickly.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and the Virginia Department of Transportation along with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, the Virginia Department of Transportation, Transurban and HERE (Nokia’s mapping business)—all partners in the Virginia Connected Corridors and the Virginia Automated Corridors programs—invited members of the media to this showing. While we could not all participate in the driving show, we watched a live feed from inside the cars where we first heard the automation come to life with the sounds similar to that in a video game. The dashboard lit up with blue dots, and just like that, the car was in control, braking to avoid a collision with an upcoming motorcyclist who had braked quickly. Speed was slowed down to 25 mph as the car entered a construction zone. And, later, it changed lanes to avoid a police cruiser on the side of the road. There were situations the vehicle couldn’t handle. In those scenarios the automation notified the driver for an immediate driver takeover.
The vehicle is equipped with short-range communications (DSRC and cellular technology), which was the reason the car could sense the other vehicles and infrastructure scenarios. It is a technology that VTTI and others have been working on for the past 20 years with use of the Virginia Smart Road, a 2.2-mile-long test track that opened in 2002 in Montgomery County, where auto manufactures, mapping companies and new technology platforms can test these automated systems.
While some may question the safety of these new technologies, Sen. Warner likens it to the time people were up in arms about seat belts and air bag regulations for vehicles. Who questions those rules now? Greg Winfree, the U.S. Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, points to the benefits this technology will bring to the roadways. “Here in the U.S. we have at least 32,719 highway fatalities on an annual basis,” he says. “To have an opportunity to address 80 percent of those crashes particularly amongst unimpaired drivers, we foresee taking huge and measurable numbers out of that roadway fatality rate. This technology is game-changing and disruptive in a positive way.”
When it comes down to it, the future of self-driving cars is already on the cusp of reality. This summer Telsa unveiled its Model S sedan. In 2016, Audi plans to release its self-driving car, and Cadillac has plans to follow with a release of its own hands-free vehicle. There are features present in current vehicle models that are already on the road—Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti have lane keeping features—but the level of full automation is not yet there. While these cars and models have features such as lane control and some autopilot features, there are still technologies that need to be developed before fully automated self-driving cars are traversing the roads. And this is where Virginia wants to make its mark. “Virginia is open for automated and unmanned business, let there be no doubt,” says Karen Jackson, the Virginia Secretary of Technology.
Researchers, transportation leaders and our political representatives already see Virginia in a position to be the leader in automated, unmanned endeavors. Sen. Warner points to the federal facilities we already have: research facilities such as the Smart Road, NASA, Langley and Wallops Island to name a few. And it is early enough in the game to also help set the regulations for the technology, and the state’s transportation leaders are already involved in the research aspect.
“I make a prediction today,” stated Sen. Warner in the Eads Parking Lot in Arlington. “Automated systems, whether they are aerial, driving or maritime, will be as disruptive and transformative over the next decade of our lives as the wireless revolution was 30-plus years ago.”
( December 2015 )
