By Onn Haran
What you’ll learn:
- How V2X technology can save lives.
- The various ways V2X can help reduce cost.
Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication enables vehicles and other road users to communicate with one another and their environment.
The technology complements the information coming from other sensors, specifically in non-line-of-sight scenarios, rough weather, or poor lighting conditions. It significantly improves overall road safety, effectively coordinating vehicles, self-driving cars, motorcyclists, cyclists, and pedestrians.
In 2016, the NHTSA published an analysis on the safety potential of vehicle-to-everything comms while proposing to mandate V2X in all new passenger cars. The proposal was recently withdrawn, but its insights still serve as a solid reference. It showed that V2X would save an estimated 987 to 1,366 lives and 305,000 to 418,000 injuries per year.
While these numbers are impressive and rarely achievable with other new safety features, people familiar with the potential of V2X must be puzzled as to why the estimated value was so low. The main reason is that only two intersection warnings were analyzed: Intersection Movement Assist (IMA) and Left Turn Assist (LTA) between two vehicles.
