V2x Technology: Saying Goodbye to Road Accidents 

Imagine a vehicle that’s aware of every vehicle and pedestrian within a one-kilometre radius. Aware of their exact location, speed, and direction. Imagine if this awareness went beyond the vehicle’s line of sight and accounted for bends in the road, intersections, obstruction by trucks, and bad weather. 

If such technology was possible, accidents would reduce greatly. They might even become a thing of the past. 

You don’t have to imagine such a world very hard. Advances in technology are ushering in the age of accident-free road travel. 

Smart Technology

Nowadays, it seems like everything cool has the word smart in it. We have smartphones, smart homes and appliances, smartwatches, smart television… The list goes on and on. 

So, if you guessed that smart technology has something to do with a future free of road accidents, you were right. 

Connectivity and communication are key features of smart technology. Connectivity in a smart home makes it possible to control your smart fridge from anywhere in the world using your smartphone. 

For our roads to be safer, vehicles will need to have advanced communication and connectivity with everything around them. Great progress has been made with autonomous vehicles, but is it enough? 

We Need More than Self Driving Cars

Self-driving cars have been made possible by equipping vehicles with the ability to interact with the environment. For instance, they have cameras to see what surrounds them. In addition, they use technology such as radar to learn more about what they see. 

The abilities of self-driving vehicles to interact with their environment are quite advanced. However, there have been limitations. For example, no camera can see a pedestrian or vehicle that is outside the line of sight. 

This means that while autonomous vehicles are awesome, on their own, they are no better than humans at preventing accidents. 

Vehicle to Everything Communication

If accidents are to be a thing of the past, vehicles have to be able to communicate fully with everything around them. At the moment, autonomous vehicles interact with their environment primarily by seeing. For maximum road safety, in addition to seeing other entities like pedestrians, vehicles will have to talk to them. 

V2x technology is making reliable communication among entities on roads possible. 

How Vehicle to Everything Communication Would Work 

For V2x technology to deliver the intended road safety results, every entity on the road has to be equipped with a communication unit. Such entities include infrastructures like intersections, traffic lights, and parking systems. Pedestrians and cyclists would also have to be connected, possibly through smartphones. Of course, for maximum effectiveness, all vehicles would have to be connected. 

Once all entities on roads have been equipped to communicate, all that’s left is for them to exchange information in real-time. Moving entities, such as vehicles and cyclists, would continuously generate data about their location, direction, and speed. This data would be shared with vehicles in the vicinity. 

Stationary entities like intersections would collect information about all surrounding entities. For example, through cameras and radar, data about vehicles approaching an intersection would be collected. This data would then be broadcast, enabling approaching vehicles to see outside their line of sight, for example around bends. 

For intersections to generate and relay data to surrounding vehicles in real-time, they would have to be made smart. 

Smart Intersections Are Key in Vehicle to Everything Communication 

With many accidents happening at intersections, they have presented a major challenge to road safety. One solution would be to make the intersections smart and link them to the vehicle-to-everything communication ecosystem. 

A smart intersection would not only be able to capture data about the surroundings but also transmit that data. It would be fitted with cameras and radar to allow it to see. It would also be fitted with communication devices. 

Accidents at intersections often happen because an oncoming vehicle is out of the driver’s line of sight. At a busy intersection, it can also be difficult to keep track of all moving objects. Thanks to advances in big data and artificial intelligence, a smart intersection can comfortably monitor an intersection and help drivers or autonomous vehicles make safer decisions. 

Challenges Facing the Adoption of Vehicle to Everything Communication

As we’ve seen so far, vehicle-to-everything communication is key to road safety. However, before the system can be fully implemented, there are substantial challenges that will have to be overcome. Below are the main challenges: 

The Huge Scale of Collaboration Required

If some vehicles are connected and others are not, we won’t have made much progress in the quest for road safety. Similarly, if some intersections are smart and others aren’t, we won’t reap the full benefits. For this approach to road safety to work, all players have to be involved.  

Cities have to commit to building the infrastructure required. Vehicle manufacturers have to commit to installing all vehicles with the necessary technology. 

Getting all the parties involved to work towards the same goal is not easy. This remains a key problem, one we will have to find a way of working around. 

Competing Communication Technologies

Currently, there are two competing communication technologies. 

One uses a wireless local area network. It can be likened to wi-fi. It has a maximum range of 1km, is very reliable, and has low latency. It works perfectly even in extreme weather conditions and is not dependent on the presence of cellular network coverage. 

The other technology is cellular and has two operational modes. The first mode enables vehicle-to-vehicle communication. It is designed for warnings such as speed limit violations, imminent collisions, and road hazard warnings. The second operational mode enables vehicle-to-network communication. It is designed for use cases that don’t have strict low latency requirements, such as infotainment. 

It is uncertain which technology will be made the industry standard. This uncertainty might cause implementation delays because industry players will be keen to adhere to the agreed-upon standard. However, both technologies could end up being used together. This way, we’d get the best of both.  

Security Vulnerability  

If vehicles will be communicating with each other, then the question of whether that communication can be tampered with is unavoidable. Before vehicle-to-everything communication can be embraced, the security issue will have to be dealt with. 

Of the possible solutions, using blockchain technology to implement a decentralized multiparty system is the most promising. The good news is that efforts are already underway to develop a standard to enable safe communication across different manufacturers and suppliers. 

Data Storage and Processing

Having many vehicles generating and sharing information will require huge data handling and processing capabilities. In addition, smart infrastructure like intersections will generate even more data. The only way to handle and make sense of all this data will be artificial intelligence. 

Artificial intelligence has been applied widely in the automotive industry. However, its use will have to be extended. 

Conclusion

It is possible to live in a world with significantly fewer road accidents. To do this, we’ll have to make road infrastructure smart and make it possible for vehicles to communicate with all entities on roads. The benefits of this include not only improved safety but also perks such as efficient parking allocation and better traffic flow. 

However, the path to improved road safety is paved with significant challenges. Still, it’s comforting to know that we are making progress in developing solutions. All in all, a world where road accidents are a thing of the past seems within reach.