Open Questions in VRU Standards from Security and Privacy Perspectives

Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) intend to make road traffic safer by the use of communication among vehicles and other entities on the road. It is collectively called Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X). Since 2020, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has published new specifications on Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). The intent of including VRUs in the C-ITS is to extend road safety to non-vehicle road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists. Communication involving vehicles and these road users is called Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P). ETSI has published three specifications on VRU since 2020. However, careful analysis of these specifications reveals that considerations on security and privacy aspects are not addressed. Fully addressing these aspects are essential in order to ensure successful integration of VRUs in the C-ITS system. This paper identifies key open questions on security and privacy, and presents requirements necessary to integrate VRUs while maintaining security and privacy properties of the overall system. We propose that relevant Standard Developing Organizations (SDOs) such as ETSI ITS, IEEE 1609 and SAE to take these proposals into consideration upon standardizing VRUs in C-ITS systems.