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V2X and Active Travel

V2X is an all encompassing term for technology that powers Vehicle2Vehicle, Vehicle2Infrastucture and Infrastructure2Vehicle communication in a standards compliant format that is gaining ground fast. There have been a number of recent trials of V2X technology in India and abroad involving vehicles fitted with On-Board Units (OBU) and Road Side Units (RSU) communicating to each other over a radio spectrum, promising to improve safety and efficiency by silently exchanging invisible messages. It is all fine and dandy and the future is indeed exciting. 

 

Rajesh Krishnan, CEO of ITS Planners and  Engineers Pvt Ltd  was a panel speaker at the session on “ Active travel, traffic  management and connected vehicles” at the recently concluded ITS  World Congress, Dubai.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a road is a smooth surface that vehicles travel on and a street is a section of road that has vehicles and businesses abutting it. Streets are used by all and sundry and is the very essence of city (or village) life. But where does that leave the humble pedestrian, cyclist, wheelers, and perhaps even the riders of motorised two-wheelers once V2X is rolled out at scale? Would V2X technology result in an equitable future for all or would it benefit only the motorised four-wheeler users? This was the topic of the panel discussion involving members from different countries, both developed and developing.

Many assumptions made during the development of V2X (and autonomous vehicle) technologies will result in sub-optimal benefits not only to the technology have nots, but also to the technology haves. We should consider the context of V2X that is inclusive of all road users as we develop and deploy this technology.

–  Rajesh Krishnan

It was implicitly assumed by all panellists that the context of the discussion is urban traffic rather than highway traffic because of the focus on active travel or non-motorised transport. There is a need to deploy first generation ITS such as traffic signals in the developed world. For example, Tokyo has more than ten thousand traffic signals, while Lucknow has barely 150 and Bhutan has none. It is also important that the installed ITS infrastructure works reliably. It is not uncommon in parts of Africa for traffic signals to get turned off during parts of the day due to unreliable power.

Traffic signals in India are not supremely reliable either, we have specific challenges due to the chaotic street environment. (On a lighter note, while we have a famous dancing traffic policeman in Indore, it is common for unemployed youth to control traffic while grooving to music often dancing spectacularly, and the passers by hand them money for their traffic management services). Without the basic ITS infrastructure that is taken for granted in the developed world, it is clear that we would face challenges in deploying and making use of V2X technology. It is safe to assume that we will not see an equitable distribution of benefits due to V2X geographically.

There is a second side to the coin when it comes to equity. A society needs a strong foundation of basic stability and economic prosperity, followed by an educated population and skillsets. Only then the society will be able to leverage and benefit from technology. A number of less developed countries either lack the foundation or an educated population. Let us take the case of countries having a stable foundation but is found lacking when it comes to education and awareness.

 V2X technology is inherently defensive. This is understandable given the spectre of expensive law suites, should the V2X technology cause an accident. A people lacking civic sense may quickly realise that walking in front of a vehicle will result in the vehicle stopping for the pedestrian and V2X enabled intersections will become a free for all crossing area for pedestrians. This will deter people from adopting V2X technology as the additional cost of technology will not only be not beneficial to them but will result in incurring a dis-benefit. What should be the behaviour of the technology in such a scenario? How is the legal framework going to evolve to save us from such a dystopian future? These are some of the points to ponder for the wider ITS community.

Another dimension to consider when one thinks about equity is the age of the vehicle population and technology available within them. New vehicles will presumably have more and more V2X technology as we progress into the future. However, many countries have an aging vehicle population with the average age of vehicles well over 20 years in some of the medium sized countries and close to a decade in some of the developed countries. While we have laws about scrapping older vehicles, there are discussions afoot to make the scrapping criterion emissions based rather than age based.

This will result in older vehicles that are not V2X enabled mingling with fully V2X compliant vehicles for the foreseeable future. This means that we need to install technology on the infrastructure side that can detect all the vehicles regardless of they are V2X enabled or not. Of course, the infrastructure cannot communicate with such vehicles, but V2X enabled semi-autonomous vehicles can be made aware of all the vehicles, including users of non-motorised transport and pedestrians. There were LIDAR based sensors on the offer at the ITS World Congress Exhibition for such a scenario, including from companies in the ITS India Pavilion.

The bigger question as we roll out V2X is what types of sensors would we need to make our streets safe for all types of users? We clearly need to go beyond what we typically deploy on the street. Can we extract efficiencies beyond what is currently possible using data from such sensors? What kind of algorithms and capabilities do we need in our ATCS/UTC systems for this? Finally, how do we ensure that technology does not become an invisible barrier that prevents the technology have nots from using our streets in the future thereby ensuring an equitable future? Technology can be a force for good as long as we put it to use appropriately – V2X is no different.

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