Development, Deployment, and Testing of an Integrated Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety System

Commercial vehicles are an important part of the United States economy, and the number of commercial vehicles on North American roadways is increasing each year. With this increase in truck traffic comes an increasing concern about safety on our nation's roadways. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has established a goal of reducing fatalities and injuries from commercial vehicle crashes by 50 percent by 2010.. This is an aggressive goal and will require the cooperative efforts.ofall partners involved in cop:unercial vehicle operations. One approach to improving commercial vehicle safety is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of state regulatory and enforcement activities. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, in cooperation V\;'iththe Kentucky Transportation Center at the University of Kentucky, has been a leader in the application of Intelligent Transportation Systems to Commercial Vehicle Operations. Through programs such as Advantage 1-75 and the Commercial Vehicle Information Systems and Networks (CVISN) Model Deployment, Kentucky has deployed a suite of services to streamline enforcement, identifY high-risk carriers, and concentrate enforcement efforts on those carriers most likely to be in violation. Concurrently with Kentucky's efforts in commercial vehicle administration and enforcement, the Calspan-University of Buffalo(CUBRC) / Veridian Engineering Team has been developing onvehicle technologies to improve the safety of the commercial vehicle itself. This includes technologies for crash detection and notification; wireless communications; automatic vehicle location; vehicle system communications; and automatic brake monitoring. These systems have been' developed and tested separately, and as yet have not been brought together into an integrated on-vehicle system. The project described in this proposal addresses the objective of improving commercial vehicle safety from two perspectives. The project team will design, develop, and test an integrated onvehicle system to accomplish the functions of Automatic Collision Notification (ACN), Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL), and Automated Brake Monitoring (ABM). The system will be developed, tested, and deployed on a small fleet of commercial vehicles to provide preliminary data on system economic and safety benefits. In parallel with development of the on-vehicle system, Kentucky will expand its weigh station electronic screening program to include more weigh stations and more motor carriers. The program will expand from the current six weigh stations to include all fifteen weigh stations that are suitable for electronic screening, and the number of participating trucks will expand from the current 5,000 to 20,000 or more.