Driving safely in smart cars

Addresses the following question: how does one know a proposed design for an automated vehicle/highway system (AVHS) is safe? In particular, can one prove that there can be no high relative velocity collision on the AVHS? The authors show that if the controllers in the vehicles satisfy a set of constraints, then the AVHS is safe. The problem of checking whether the controllers satisfy the constraints is equivalent to solving an optimal control problem.