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 Advanced System Testing utilizing a Data Acquisition System on the Highways (FAST DASH) program is to perform quick-turnaround 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 systems using the following high-level metrics:
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) will manage the independent evaluations and the focus is to evaluate market-ready safety systems. VTTI is accepting applications on an ongoing basis from those interested in having their promising CV safety technology independently evaluated.
All interested applicants should read the research project outline in the Statement of Work (SOW). A copy of the SOW can be downloaded below. Interested technology vendors should submit a brief, three-page proposal on how they will address the tasks outlined in the SOW to Andrew Krum (Project Manager) at akrum@vtti.vt.edu at any time. Please note that the selected technology vendor will be responsible for providing, free of charge, as many safety systems as needed to conduct the evaluation. Vendors are encouraged to submit proposals on an ongoing basis and they will be placed in a pipeline of promising projects under continuous consideration.