The World's Most Extensive Real-World Deployment of Connected Vehicle Safety
Kevin Gay, senior operations research analyst and Safety Pilot Program team member at Volpe, spoke on research being conducted by Volpe and the University of Michigan on an extensive deployment of connected vehicles on October 25, 2011.
The Connected Vehicle Safety Pilot Program is part of a major scientific research program run jointly by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and its research and development partners in private industry. The Connected Vehicle Safety Research Program supports the development of safety applications based on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications systems, using dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) technology. The Safety Pilot is designed to determine the effectiveness of these safety applications at reducing crashes and to show how real-world drivers will respond to these safety applications in their vehicles. The test will include many vehicles with vehicle awareness devices, others with integrated safety systems, and others that use aftermarket safety devices to communicate with surrounding vehicles.
The vision of the Safety Pilot is to test connected vehicle safety applications in real-world driving scenarios to determine their effectiveness at reducing crashes and to ensure that the devices are safe and do not unnecessarily distract motorists or cause unintended consequences. The Safety Pilot will evaluate everyday drivers' reactions, both in a controlled environment through driver clinics and on actual roadways with other vehicles through the real-world model deployment. In all, approximately 3,000 vehicles will be included in the combined model deployment and driver clinics. Driver reactions will be evaluated as they use the latest wireless vehicle safety applications and receive in-vehicle warning messages if they approach potentially dangerous traffic situations.
About the Speaker
Kevin Gay contributes strategic thinking and technical direction for both quantitative research and information system technology projects. He is a certified project management professional (PMP) with over a decade of experience in managing budgets, resources, and schedules in challenging advanced technology projects.
Currently, Gay is assisting the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) in the technical management of the Safety Pilot Program, a multimodal year-long field operational test of DSRC-based crash avoidance systems involving thousands of motor vehicles and corresponding roadside systems. These crash avoidance systems have the potential to impact 81 percent of all vehicle crashes.
Previously, Gay served as the project manager for the development of a prototype back office system to facilitate the Wireless Roadside Inspection (WRI) Pilot Test for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The WRI Program seeks to improve motor carrier safety (reduction in accidents) by increased compliance with regulations through a higher frequency of roadside safety inspections using wireless technologies. Gay has worked on many FMCSA-sponsored projects since joining Volpe, including the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program, which redesigned FMCSA safety compliance business processes, and the Program Effectiveness Models, which provide analytical estimates of the safety benefits generated from FMCSA safety programs.
Prior to joining Volpe, Gay worked in private industry, developing advanced transportation planning and execution applications to enhance the capabilities of shippers, third-party logistics providers, and transportation providers to buy, sell, manage, and optimize multimodal transportation services. Gay received a BS in applied mathematics from Georgia Institute of Technology.
View the video from this event.