A consortium of California highway engineers is developing a high-tech road system that cuts down traffic, reduces emissions, reduces the risk of crashes and allows drivers to drive without using their hands.
Their premise is bold: cars and roads are smart and safe, while drivers are risky and not so bright.
In the brighter future envisioned by Partners for Advanced Transportation and Highways (PATH) and Caltrans, on-board computers dialogue with magnets embedded in roadways, keeping vehicles in fast-moving single file lines—hands-free.
The project is called SmartAHS (Automated Highway Systems) and it is one of dozens of ongoing research projects sponsored by PATH. According to the consortium, accident rates on their smart highways are very low while allowing drivers to read, eat or do whatever they feel like on their speedy way to their destination.
On an automated highway, the car essentially drives the driver.
If this all sounds too good to be true, the technologies in question have been field tested since 1997 when engineers began using an experimental stretch of highway I-15 near San Diego southern California. So far, PATH’s engineers have been able to manage a “platoon” of cars driving at 60 miles per hour with a scant six feet of space between each vehicle.
The PATH consortium, which is administered by the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, will launch its AHS program in the real world sometime within the next five years by automating mass-transit buses in some California cities.
For more information about the “smart” highways program or other innovative traffic projects created by PATH that are already in motion, please visit the consortium’s website at path.berkeley.edu.
- Smart Cars, Automated Highways, Mechanical Engineering
- “Are officials smart enough?,” Government Technology
- Standards gap blocks smart highway, EETimes.com