Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150048
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: By STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
For dozens of academics, government representatives and manufacturers of the latest technology, it's a nationwide vision of smart roads and smart cars that brought them to the Rural IVHS conference at Virginia Tech this week.
IVHS stands for "Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems," the concept of using computers and advanced technology to make travel on the nation's roadways safer and more efficient.
Tech's Center for Transportation Research, one of three federally funded IVHS research centers, hosted the conference, which focused thinking on IVHS applications in rural settings, not just in urban environments.
That's because, according to Lyle Saxton, director of traffic and safety operations with the Federal Highway Administration:
Eighty percent of the country's roadways are in rural areas;
Sixty percent of fatal accidents occur there;
Emergency response to accidents takes twice as long in rural as in urban settings.
"If you are trying to locate that driver that needs help ... you've got a lot of territory out there," Saxton said.
To that end, research is being done on "Mayday" devices that would employ satellite and computer link-ups to signal emergency personnel to the location of a driver in distress.
Again though, like the proposed smart road, a test bed for transportation technology, a "Mayday" device is only one of a variety of technologies that IVHS proponents are working on.
Attendees also heard and read about electronic toll collection, computerized mapping systems in cars, fog and storm detectors. They talked about using audio, fiber-optic and infrared sensors to measure all kinds of traffic characteristics. (As close as the intersection of U.S. 460 and Southgate Drive near Virginia Tech's campus in Blackburg are acoustic sensors, designed by AT&T, which allow scientists to classify the type of vehicle passing and to determine traffic volumes and speed - factors that could be used to detect accidents or to regulate traffic onto approach ramps.)
There are plenty of questions about the technologies, such as their cost-effectiveness, compatibility among various systems, and just how many of them the individual driver wants or can use.
For example, said Mike McCauley, who was demonstrating a $1.5 million automobile simulator, it may be a good idea to mount a mapping system on a car dashboard to help drivers find their way. But the map must be simple enough so that drivers don't find themselves looking at it too much - while their car drifts off the side of the road.
Some speakers lamented the time it takes to get projects out of laboratories and into practical use.
"Right now we're shooting in many different directions ... but we've got to start to pull this together," said Dennis Foderberg, director of the IVHS Institute at the University of Minnesota. "There are things that could immediately be put out on the road today that could save lives."
"It's now time to stop fooling around with too much research ... " said James Constantino, executive director of IVHS America. "In real estate, they say, 'location, location, location.' In IVHS, we say, 'deployment, deployment, deployment.'"
Memo: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.