New Technology Could Drastically Reduce Car Fatalities, Experts Say
KENNESAW, Ga. – As holiday travel ramps up, concerns about road safety and potential accidents are always top of mind. Fortunately, advancements in vehicle technology offer a promising path toward a safer driving experience. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, approximately 40,000 lives are lost on U.S. roadways each year.
Dr. Billy Kihei, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Kennesaw State University, believes that innovative technology holds the key to significantly reducing these numbers. He explained that C-V2X, or cellular vehicle-to-everything communications, has the potential to revolutionize road safety, especially with the technology’s ability to allow vehicles to communicate with each other. “It’s cars talking to each other so they don’t hit each other,” he said.
While widespread adoption of C-V2X technology is anticipated in the next 12 to 15 years, Dr. Kihei is also developing an interim system to provide a bridge to this future, as he noted, an interim system that gives C-V2X radar-like sensing abilities. This technology enables cars to detect and react to their surroundings, even through obstructions like corners or vegetation, by utilizing radio frequency signals to passively scan the environment.
Dr. Kihei emphasized that this goes beyond the safety systems found in newer vehicles. “A lot of the autonomous vehicles, they have cameras that look all around and then try to piece all that together. You can do this with radio frequency, you can do this around corners, over hills, through vegetation. This technology could really make a dent in reducing fatalities on the roadways,” he said.
Dr. Kihei estimates that the technology can help address up to 80 percent of non-impaired accidents in the U.S. “Using just an antenna that listens 360 degrees around. Maybe they’re texting and driving. Their car is talking, but no one is listening, but the technology we’re working on will be listening with them,” he said. The development of such technology could indeed lead to a safer future for drivers.
