Smart cars, smart roads - traffic-management systems - includes related article on an upcoming Intelligent Transportation Society of American conference

Nation's Business, Feb, 1996 by Julie Candler

The system can be used in 14 major population centers where map databases have been assembled. Maps covering the entire U.S. are expected to be available by the end of the year.

"In two or three years," says Roger Stevens, general manager of Rockwell Automotive's electronics operations, "you will be able to buy an integrated navigation and driver-information system. It will take you on the shortest-time route, direct you to emergency services, adjust your route based on traffic congestion ahead, and provide messages and new information you request. Our eventual goal is to achieve a price under $600 for an integrated system."

Hands-Off Handling

Some firms, working with funds appropriated by Congress under the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, are developing a prototype of an automated highway system. The FHA hopes to have at least a test track of automated roadway in operation by next year.

Vehicles equipped with intelligent cruise-control systems that would use radar to detect objects ahead and to trigger automatic braking or acceleration would be kept in lanes by magnetic highway. Cars and trucks would be able to drive safely at high speeds only inches behind the vehicle ahead.

Looking Backward

Delco Electronics Corp., a division of General Motors, in Kokomo, Ind., has developed a system that uses microwave sensors to detect objects close behind or to the side of a vehicle, eradicating the vehicle's blind spot. The Forewarn system, priced at about $1,000, was introduced by Delco in November for use on heavy-duty trucks.

Harold Collins, the former owner of Collins Moving Systems, Inc., in Kokomo, and now a consultant to the firm, tested the Forewarn system for 100,000 miles starting in May 1994 after Delco installed it for free on his truck. He recalls one instance when the system probably prevented an accident.

He had just passed a car and put on his turn signal to return to the right lane. "Before I could start changing lanes, my turn signal was beeping and the red light on the right-hand mirror was lighting up. I waited a minute before I could see a little sports car on my right trying to squeeze into the same lane. Without Forewarn, I would have run him off the road or we would have collided."

Quick Weigh-Ins

A pilot project under the ITS funding for commercial-vehicle operations has set up automated clearance systems at the 29 truckweighing stations along the 2,000-mile Interstate 75 corridor from Canada to Florida. Called Advantage I-75, the project is equipping 4,500 trucks with devices that allow them to few stations rather than all of them.

The transponders - about the size of a deck of cards - contain a microchip that collects and stores the data about a truck at the first weigh station. After that, a half-mile before many of the weigh stations, the truck chives over electronic scales that can weigh it while it's in motion, then beneath antenna-like data readers. The readers transmit the information to the weigh stations, where computers signal "bypass" or "stop" by audible tones and a green or red light on the transponder.