The comparison of the city streets outside my window with Disney World doesn't immediately come to mind. But it was interesting to hear the perspective of Francine Romine, head of marketing and communications for the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).Romine recently went to the Magic Kingdom, and on entering she and her husband were issued Magic Band wristbands. These connected bits of plastic absorb the owner's identity, both personal and financial, and are used to open hotel room doors, get access to theme parks, make reservations at restaurants and for shows, and to make purchases. "My husband was not so excited that you could just swipe the wristband and the money would immediately be removed from our bank account," she said with a laugh.That's pretty Magic, all right. But it makes Romine's point about connected technology in cars: "If you want the benefits of the latest technology, you'll have to suspend some concerns," she said.I guess you could say that I, personally, suspended a concern or two when I was one of the initial signups to UMTRI's Safety Pilot connected car program in Ann Arbor. For a year now, I've had one of UMTRI's data collector devices installed on my car, putting out communication to other cars and to devices at the roadside around town. Am I worried that Big Brother is watching? Well, not really. I'm more interested in the idea that cars are becoming more than silent lumps of sheetmetal and are able to interact with each other in a modern way that will advance safety. Call me in denial; maybe all the people at Disney World are, too. But the tradeoff might be worth it.At this week's Global Symposium on Connected Vehicles and Infrastructure, UMTRI has brought together experts from around the world to talk about progress of its program and encourage discussion about making connected technology as globally secure and useful as possible. The Safety Pilot program was much talked about.Here are some fun facts I learned:
1. It's huge.
The Safety Pilot program started in late 2012 and enlisted 2,800 participants (including me) who have allowed UMTRI to install devices in their cars. Most, like mine, send and receive signals without doing anything you can see, hear, or detect from inside the car. A few are equipped to alert the driver about safety issues such as impending collisions or traffic issues. All the devices store data that researchers are using as a rich mine of information to help develop connected-vehicle technology. From 2012 until now, these devices have collectively recorded 3.9 million trips or 24.6 million miles on the roads, and they've sent out 30 billion basic safety messages through the technology. And about 80 percent of the time when the participating cars are on the road, they've come into contact with another connected vehicle. Kind of amazing considering the small size of the participant group! But really, this whole thing is similar to, but more interesting than, the gathering of market data that Disney is looking for when it hands out those Magic Bands.2. It's diverse.
Among the participants are six motorcycles, which ran up 4,676 connected miles from May to November last year. During that time, they encountered another connected pilot vehicle 4,376 times. They've collected useful data on kinematics and motorcyclist behavior that University of Michigan engineering students are analyzing as we speak.A participant about to hit the roads next week is a bicyclist.3. It's growing.
The project put out a call to grow the number of participating vehicles to 9,000. On the day an article appeared on the local Ann Arbor newspaper's website, 500 people called to volunteer. The next step is to expand the program from one part of Ann Arbor outward to all of southeastern Michigan, with a planned participant base of 20,000 vehicles.4. It has a really important point.
Mike Shulman of Ford is technical lead of the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership (CAMP), which is a consortium of several automakers working on connected-vehicle technology. . "If drivers are pretty good most of the time," he says, "every once in a while, not so much, and when you aggregate over the whole population you see 32,000 fatalities." He notes that early estimates suggested vehicle-to-vehicle communication could help avoid 80 percent of crashes. That's a persuasive argument.5. It's going to be complicated.
UMTRI's Sayer says it's no good creating connected vehicles that become obsolete, noting that every device in the Safety Pilot program had to come in for at least one software update this year. "We need something that drivers, passengers, and pedestrians are going to maintain," he said.Automakers, through the CAMP consortium and other efforts, are working together on setting standards, test procedures, and safety requirements. Such things as retrofitting existing vehicles or selling the connected technology as an aftermarket product? That's all still up in the air. So is figuring out how the devices would be maintained and updated.
6. It's going to be expensive to set up.
Shulman commented: "We can demonstrate a bunch of operations, but the infrastructure guys are really broke, and they've got to be convinced this is a good thing to invest their money in. Is Montana going to do this? We need the data that enables people to make those investment decisions."NHTSA is looking at the cost over a forty-year time horizon. That's some amortization table. Does the benefit outweigh the cost? The agency is slated to release a decision paper and analysis soon that should have some answers.
Good information. Keep it up.
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