The trial is being conducted by the University of University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) for the US Department of Transportation. In all nearly 3,000 cars, trucks and buses in Ann Arbor Michigan equipped with the technology will 'talk' to each other in real time to help avoid crashes and improve traffic flow.
The trial is the second phase of DOT's connected vehicle safety pilot and follows a series of smaller trials. According to DOT's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), these "revealed that an overwhelming majority of drivers (9 out of 10) who have experienced vehicle to vehicle [V2V] technology have a highly favourable opinion of its safety benefits and would like to have V2V safety features on their personal vehicle."
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Cohda CEO, Paul Gray, told iTWire: "NHTSA funded eight companies to develop one of the components for the first trial and four to develop another of the components and when they awarded the role of test conductor for the major trial to the University of Michigan, it was required to use equipment from at least two of the vendors from the test phase.
"To keep things simple the University used just two. So of the 2800 vehicles in the trial Cohda is supplying 1600 of those. That consists of 650 of the vehicle awareness devices that go into the bulk of the fleet they are really just black boxes - there is no driver interaction. Then there are another 250 of the after market safety devices. These are complete systems including the warning to the driver. They are the main source of information used in the trial."
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