Page 24 - Motor Trend (May 2020)

NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Frank Markus

Technologue

Continental’s cheap solution

to wrong-way-driver crashes

hat’s a life worth? The answer probably additional radar units.) The sensors inform a chip on the
depends on the life in question. Young or pole that assesses each object’s size, speed, and direc-
old? Related to me or not? Well relax, this tion of travel, ruling out animals, pedestrians, bicyclists,
isn’t another robocar-chooses-nuns-or-baby- or vehicles slowly reversing to a missed exit. The chip
Wcarriage treatise. It’s a tale of two technolo- then communicates this info to the cloud via cellular
gies aimed at saving 300 to 400 lives per year—but at or DSRC communication, where a “heat map” of traffic
dramatically different costs. is generated so that temporary lane closures involving
The first is the reverse camera, which became manda- opposite-direction traffic don’t cause false alarms.
tory as of May 1, 2018. An NHTSA study published just When a vehicle is detected entering the highway via
before Congress enacted the Cameron Gulbransen Kids an off-ramp or driving the wrong way down the regular
Transportation Safety Act mandating a 10-year phase- lanes of traffic, an alert is sent out to the immediate
in of reverse cameras determined the average annual area (probably a 5-mile radius) via telematics. Such
fatality rate for back-over accidents in all passenger messages will be received in the newest vehicles by
vehicles was 362, noting that 44 percent of these were V2X communications receivers that are just beginning
children under age 5. to roll out, but they can also be transmitted
A 2017 NHTSA study tallying the cost-per- via smartphone apps like Waze or Google
vehicle of various safety systems pegged the Maps, and it’s conceivable that a system like
cost of backup cameras at $27.19 per car and the one used to transmit Amber Alerts could
$38.53 per light truck. The back-over deaths be narrowly focused on phone users in the
haven’t dropped to zero, but let’s pretend they immediate vicinity of a wrong-way driver.
did. Multiplying those dollar-cost figures by Continental quotes OpenStreetMap data
total car and light truck sales for 2019 results suggesting there are about 58,000 exit ramps
in an annual cost to society that tops a half- in the U.S. Multiplying that number by a
billion dollars. That divides out to $1.6 million per life. targeted system cost of $1,000 per exit ramp yields a
Totally worth it if it’s your kiddo or one destined to cure number that’s almost exactly one-tenth our annual Forewarned: Not
a future cancer you’ll suffer, but it’s undeniably pricey. spend on backup cameras, or about $147,000 per life for many cars receive
V2X signals yet, but
A similar annual death rate applies to wrong-way- the first year. But this infrastructure will last for years, some 300+ million
driver accidents on divided highways—295 crashes dramatically lowering the per-life costs over time. As users of mapping
apps could easily
resulting in 389 deaths according to NTSB and Institute that’s cheaper than a DUI ticket, if Congress won’t fund
be warned of a
of Transportation Engineers analysis of 2004–2017 data this bargain lifesaver, maybe drunks should. Q wrong-way driver.
pulled from NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis
Reporting System (FARS) database.
These wrecks are usually catastrophic
and happen mostly at night, with 75
percent involving alcohol and 31 percent
occurring between midnight and 3 a.m.,
right after the bars close.
Continental is working to develop
a wrong-way-driver warning system
using automotive-grade radar sensors,
computing chips, and telematics equipment that all runs
at low voltage with modest power demands that a small
solar array should be able to provide.
The whole works would be compact enough to mount
to existing exit ramp sign poles. Long- and short-range
radar units are used, the former featuring a 20-degree
field of view and 820-foot range as required by adaptive
cruise/emergency braking systems. The latter boasts a
150-degree field of view and 330-foot range as required
for blind-spot/rear cross-traffic alert systems.
These devices sense traffic on the off-ramp and in the
adjacent lanes of travel. (Six-lane highways may need

24 MOTORTREND.COM MAY 2020