Integrating In-Vehicle Safety with Dedicated Short Range Communications for Intersection Collision Avoidance (2010-01-0747)

This paper describes in detail a prototype safety system presented at the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) World Congress held in New York, NY, in 2008. This system relies on real-time information broadcast from the intersection and received by the vehicle over a dedicated wireless channel to detect potential red light violations. Audible and visual warnings in the vehicle are used to alert the driver. If these warnings are ignored and a red light violation is imminent, the vehicle brakes automatically and comes to a safe stop before entering the intersection.
Furthermore, this system is integrated with existing in-vehicle safety features with pre-crash and brake assist functionality. Pre-crash safety features are activated as an additional precaution, to reduce impact energy and protect the vehicle occupants in case of an unavoidable collision. Although this prototype was built for demonstration purposes only, it offers an interesting portent for the development of cooperative safety systems based on the integration of wireless communications with in-vehicle safety systems.