33,000 lives: A price too high

Three years ago last month, a school bus full of children on their way to Chesterfield Elementary in New Jersey edged into an intersection and was hit by a loaded dump truck. Of the 25 children on board, fifteen were injured and one, a young girl, was killed.

A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation found that connected vehicle technologies under development could have potentially prevented the crash by detecting the approaching truck and providing warnings to the bus driver not to enter the intersection.

{mosads}These technologies, known as vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication (or jointly as V2X) rely on high-speed signals operating in 75 MHz of airwaves located in the 5.9 GHz band. That spectrum, designated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for V2X communication, enables vehicles to talk to each other and the world around them ten times per second, providing real-time information on each vehicle’s speed and direction needed to prevent crashes.

Since that tragic day in Chesterfield Township, more than 100,000 people have been killed on our nation’s roads. That’s an average of 90 people each day who don’t make it home from work, school, ballet practice or the ballgame. But now, after more than $1 billion in public and private sector investment and years of research, development and testing by industry and government, a safer, more efficient vehicle and highway system is within reach.

The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that V2X technology could prevent or mitigate up to 80 percent of unimpaired vehicle crashes, saving tens of thousands of lives each year and reducing the nearly $1 trillion cost of crashes and congestion to America’s families, communities and economy.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra, speaking at the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress in Detroit last fall, announced that GM will start offering cars equipped with connected technology in 2016. Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford said recently that the potential benefits from V2X “are tremendous as the automobile becomes better integrated into the broader transportation system,” and that the advantages of smart vehicles are numerous: “vehicles in traffic jams ahead of you could alert your car and have it re-route you to avoid the delay; smart parking lots could tell your car where free spots are available; and smart roads could alert you to potholes so you could avoid them.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that “Vehicle-to-vehicle technology represents the next generation of auto safety improvements, building on the life-saving achievements we’ve already seen with safety belts and air bags,” and National Safety Council President Deborah Hersman, as Chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said V2V technology could “drastically reduce the number of crashes nationwide, especially in high-risk scenarios such as intersection collisions.”

But some in the cable and Wi-Fi industries are putting pressure on the FCC to make changes to the 5.9 GHz band of spectrum that could put the future of vehicle safety at risk.

A newly introduced bill, the Wi-Fi Innovation Act, would require the FCC to speed up a process to determine if the 5.9 GHz band set aside for life-saving V2X technology can be shared with Wi-Fi devices. Many automotive and transportation safety leaders are worried that a rush to judgment could be a rush to tragedy. Even the NTSB has expressed concern, saying “much is still unknown about frequency interference when it comes to vast numbers of connected vehicles in motion,” and that spectrum sharing proposals “may compromise this necessary spectrum allocation for collision avoidance systems.”

We recognize that spectrum is a finite resource and we are in favor of expanding the number of airwaves available for Wi-Fi if it can be done safely. Our members, including automotive and Wi-Fi leaders and government agencies, are actively exploring potential sharing solutions. But spectrum sharing technologies, which are still being developed, must be tested and proven to work before we make policy decisions that could put the future of life-saving vehicle technology at risk.

With 33,000 deaths and 2.3 million injuries on our nation’s highways every year, protecting 75 MHz of already-designated spectrum for next-generation vehicle safety is a small price to pay to keep our next generation safe on their ride to school.

Kern is the interim president and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) and Ingrassia is the managing director for Government Relations and Traffic Safety Advocacy at AAA. Ingrassia is also vice chair of the ITS America Board of Directors.