US DoT to propose V2V communication for all vehicles to prevent vehicle collisions

The US Department of Transportation (DoT) might propose that all new cars have vehicle-to-vehicle communication or V2V, from this year. The proposal comes after, the death, earlier this year of a person driving a Tesla sedan in Autopilot.

According to commentators concerns were mounting after more incidents of the kind involving Teslas in Autopilot. They say the solution to this problem might lie in connectivity.

According to the federal government, V2V connectivity could ultimately prevent or reduce the severity of about 80 per cent of collisions that did not involve a driver impaired by drugs or alcohol.

Commentators say that the benefits of connected and automated vehicles went well beyond safety and held the potential to significantly cut use of fuel and carbon emissions through more efficient traffic flow.

Populations having no access to transportation could benefit from having their daily living supplies delivered to them.

While connectivity and automation each could provide benefits on their own, their combination promised to transform the movement of people and goods more than either could alone, and to do so safely.

Tesla blamed the fatal crash on the failure of both its Autopilot technology as also the driver to see the white tractor-trailer against a bright sky.

However, the crash and the death would not have happened had the vehicle and the tractor-trailer it hit, been able to talk to each other.

Connectivity allowed smart decisions by individual drivers, by self-driving vehicles and at every level of automation in between.

Despite all the safety measures, in recent decades, there were still more than 30,000 traffic deaths every year in the US, and the number might be on the rise.

After years of steady declines, fatalities increased 7.2 per cent in 2015 to 35,092, up from 32,744 in 2014, representing the largest percentage increase in nearly 50 years, according to the US (DoT).