Is it really all about safety?

John Hibbard, Director of Permits and Operations at Georgia Department of Transportation

John Hibbard, Director of Permits and Operations at Georgia Department of Transportation

Part of my role as Director of Operations for Georgia’s Department of Transportation is serving as something of a liaison to other Departments of Transportation as well as other organizations involved in the increasing automation of mobility, a lot of which is popularly known as Autonomous Vehicles (AV’s). This is a fascinating part of my job.

Another part of my role is that I get a daily update on the number of people who have died in crashes on Georgia highways. It is always my least favorite part of my day.At this point in 2022, the news really isn’t good for Georgia. Fatalities, year-to-date, are trending very similarly to 2021. This is a sobering part of my job.

For many years before 2010 and even up to about 2015, crash fatalities had been trending downward.Declining fatal crashes was great news, year after year, and one which both made sense and which we all hoped would continue.

But starting in 2015, the number of crash fatalities flattened out and in more recent years began trending upwards – into and through the pandemic years.

So – what’s going on? What’s causing this increase in fatal crashes?

Roads in Georgia, much less nationally, are safer now than they ever have been.Georgia has spent at least $100 million a year – every year – since 2016 in specific safety-focused improvements. As well, any project we construct stands to be safer than the facility that preceded it due to more current, safety-focused standards.

Automobiles are safer every year – with increasing numbers of vehicles equipped with automatic braking and lane keeping technologies. So, with the confidence that both the roadway and the vehicle are increasingly safer, why are the number of people dying in crashes ALSO increasing?

Much of that increase appears to be due to “distraction.” Distraction is a big, broad term for lapses in attention – whether due to drowsiness, eating, or smart phone use. For Georgia,54per centof fatalities in 2020 – and then 56per cent in 2021 - occurred in crashes that were “single-vehicle, run-off-the-road” crashes: distraction. Just to add to the bits of relevant information is that for Georgia fatal crash experience with those 15-24 years old increased 20per cent from 2020 to 2021. An overwhelming part of what “distraction” means is smart phones and their incessant demand for attention.

It is much easier to say “put down the phone” than to actually do it. Young drivers have had smart phones and/or tablets as part of their lives, for ALL oftheir lives.Those devices are integral parts of them and interaction with their networks.

“There is a safety need for information flow between the infrastructure and the vehicle, and between vehicles.”

So – what will “fix” this distraction issue? One school of thought is that increasing vehicular automation – to the end of the car accomplishing most, if not all, the driving task.Or, stated somewhat differently, don’t try to “fix” the distraction but instead enhance the capabilities of the vehicle itself. And that effort has been underway by essentially all automakers, their suppliers, and any number of startup vehicle makers over the past decade.

But that increased automation cannot happen in a vacuum. One way or the other, there is a need for information flow from the infrastructure to the vehicle and back, and to flow between vehicles. This information flow would potentially include information about road conditions ahead, when the upcoming traffic signal will change, or when a nearby vehicle put on its brakes. Georgia is a national leader in this connected vehicle initiative, from the “infrastructure owner/operator” perspective. Georgia DOT has several different efforts underway, working with automakers and their suppliers to implement that connectivity and its enhanced safety benefits. But this wireless communication brings with it a big security requirement: that data flow between vehicle and infrastructure must be secure and safe. Thankfully, this concept of data security has been integral to the development of that communications throughout its now 20-year life; it’s the Security Credential Management System, or SCMS. That credentialing system provides the security of those messages and ensures that messages are not coming from bad actors.

But a logical extension of this security focus comes straight back to the systems that serve this still evolving connected and autonomous vehicle ecosystem: if the information that is sent to vehicles isn’t secure, how can it be trusted by the designers of the vehicle automation systems? And so, to this end I thank the readers of this column and encourage your continued efforts to keep networks safe, as the implications of that safety are increasingly likely to communicate directly with the vehicles that carry us on our journeys.

Ultimately, yes, it really is all about safety.

Thanks for your help.