FMCSA's Advanced System Testing using a Data Acquisition System on the Highway
Does your company have a promising commercial vehicle safety technology that could be independently evaluated by VTTI? Find out more.
The safety objective of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is to save lives and reduce injuries by preventing and minimizing the severity of truck and bus crashes (FMCSA, 2010). According to the FMCSA, the development, evaluation, and deployment of advanced safety technology will be a key to realizing this objective.
Currently, there are numerous safety systems in development that have the potential to significantly reduce crashes on our nation's roadways. For a variety of reasons, however, including lack of supporting tests and evaluations, the potential benefits that these systems may provide in reducing crashes may never be realized. The FMCSA envisions, through cooperation with the commercial vehicle (CV) industry, an influx of CV safety technologies that support the expanding role of the CV industry to safely, securely, and efficiently transport the nation's goods, products, and people. Information from motor carriers and other organizations about the effectiveness of these systems in improving safety will be valuable in advancing their further use in the CV industry.
The objective of the FMCSA's Advanced System Testing utilizing a Data Acquisition System on the Highway (FAST DASH) program is to perform quick turn-around independent evaluations of promising safety technologies aimed at commercial vehicle operations (CVO). The goal of the FAST DASH program is to determine the efficacy of the safety system using the following high–level metrics:
- Crash reduction effectiveness (i.e., safety improvements)
- Unintended consequences (i.e., safety disbenefits)
- User (e.g., driver, safety manager) acceptance (i.e., subjective opinions)
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) will manage the independent evaluations and the focus is to evaluate market–ready safety systems. These safety systems may be tested in a variety of scenarios including static and dynamic tests on the Virginia Smart Road in addition to real-world field studies using commercial vehicle fleets. For the inaugural system evaluation, a blind-spot detection system called "SideEyes" made by Novita Technologies was selected through the solicitation process. The SideEyes technology supplements visual information provided by the vehicle's standard mirrors about the presence or absence of objects alongside the vehicle to allow the driver to make better decisions regarding lane changes and merges. "SideEyes" is patented infrared technology that utilizes an array of 7 to 15 lasers to create a three-dimensional detection zone on both the driver and passenger sides of a CV. A driver is alerted to vehicles in the blind spot via amber light-emitting diodes (LEDs) mounted on both the left and right side-view mirrors.