Driving Dystopia: U.S. Relaunches Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Networking Concept

The United States is planning to relaunch a program to normalize vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology that would allow all modern vehicles to communicate with each other and the surrounding infrastructure in real time. Government agencies are claiming the resulting network would drastically improve safety for both drivers and pedestrians. However, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about V2X. The U.S. attempted a similar program years earlier before it lost momentum.

In fact, the only big change was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocating specific frequencies for connected vehicles starting in 1999. While it took quite some time for automakers to finally utilize them, they’re basically what make modern connected vehicles work. However, rather than becoming a way to centralize driving data and help to automate more roads, the bandwidth is primarily used to funnel information back to data hubs owned by automakers.

Any integration into the actual infrastructure was relatively minor, focusing on local pilot programs trying to streamline urban traffic mitigation. But the U.S. appears to be ready to take another attempt at standardizing V2X.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has introduced a program it’s calling the “ Saving Lives with Connectivity: A Plan to Accelerate V2X Deployment.” Originally released in October of 2023 as a draft, the initiative is not apparently ready for the first steps of implementation and stopping what the DOT has called a “crisis of roadway deaths.”

This is due to the United States having seen a noteworthy increase in vehicle-related fatalities since 2015 (both total and per capita). In fact, the National Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has estimated that 40,990 people died in motor vehicle incidents in 2023. That number was 32,893 a decade earlier.

Numerous American traffic-safety agencies have adopted many of the trends embraced by European nations in the hopes of combating the problem. Goals include lowering speed limits wherever possible, prioritizing public transit, allocating more of the roadway for separated bicycle and pedestrian traffic, improving emergency response, and establishing a way to network every single new vehicle that hits the pavement to the surrounding infrastructure (aka V2X).

The V2X aspect plan focuses on implementing technology based solutions to roadway safety that would network all vehicles together so they could be monitored and controlled. In most cases this would be determined by an adaptive automated process that would likewise influence the surrounding infrastructure (e.g. traffic lights). This may also open the doorway for genuine self-driving vehicles, with the assumption being that all vehicles would be fed real-time data about the surrounding traffic and behave accordingly.

Establishing a timeline for something like this is exceptionally difficult and we’ve already seen previous goals missed. But the Department of Transportation believes that this is the secret to reducing injuries on the road and believes a comprehensive V2X network could be in place by 2036.

The report itself is a mix of funding objectives (past and present), public assurances about data privacy, and studies trying to support the claim that this sort of technology will ultimately save lives. Having read similar government papers on implementing V2X years earlier, the current initiative is certainly more thoughtful. There’s more use cases to point to and the industry is in a much better position to try and help the government implement something like this.

But claims about privacy fall largely flat. The document spends a lot of time talking about privacy. However, there are loads of modern-day examples of automakers selling off user data harvested by connected vehicles to anyone willing to pay for it.

Everything else in the paper is devoted to how the FCC will need to manage bandwidth for V2X communications and questions about whether or not manufacturers will want to cooperate with the government in implementing the program. After all, they’ll need to be the ones standardizing the relevant hardware and software that would work with a myriad of devices attached to the surrounding roadway infrastructure. The government also wants to be roped in so it can benefit from the resulting driving data and intervene whenever it feels like that’s necessary.

The upside to a technology like this is that (if it works exactly as advertised) something like self-driving cars would be far easier to implement. Traffic management would also presumably become easier. But the downside is that drivers are sacrificing even more privacy and control of what happens inside their own vehicles, including direct control of their own vehicle. There are also a few ridiculous claims being made about safety in the paper. For example, it suggests that pedestrians could be warned about approaching traffic on their phones — potentially helping to avoid disaster.

But how could this ever be any more effective than looking both ways before crossing a street? It reminds me of earlier claims that self-driving vehicles would allow the blind to drive themselves, only for it to later come out that the blind community was just being used as leverage to get certain regulatory issues pushed through. Despite it being almost a decade later, blind people aren’t driving.

There’s an undercurrent of fantasy in the paper, which is somewhat understandable due to relevant technologies still being in their infancy. The industry has been toying with the idea of V2X (using different terminology) since the 1950s. It takes a little imagination to cook something like this up and a lot of work to make it a reality. However, it also seems irresponsible to assume that this massive (and outrageously expensive) endeavor will be a success when most drivers still think there are too many unfixed potholes.

“This is proven technology that works,” Shailen Bhatt, head of the Federal Highway Administration, was quoted by NPR as saying last Friday. “The roadway system is safer when all the vehicles are connected, and all the road users are connected.”

From NPR:

“The plan is a vital first step towards realizing the full life-saving potential of this technology,” said Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Homendy joined the press event virtually from Swanton, Ohio, where the NTSB is investigating a series of crashes involving multiple trucks on the Ohio Turnpike this week. V2X technology could potentially have prevented the crashes that killed four people and injured several more, she said.

“V2X can help reverse the devastating public health crisis on our nation’s roads,” Homendy said, “and fundamentally transform our nation’s transportation landscape.”

Despite enthusiasm from safety advocates and federal regulators, the technology has faced a bumpy rollout. During the Obama administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed making the technology mandatory on cars and light trucks. But the agency later dropped that idea during the Trump administration.

The deployment of V2X has been “hampered by regulatory uncertainty,” said John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents automakers.

But he’s optimistic that the new plan will help.

“This is the reset button,” Bozzella said at Friday’s announcement. “This deployment plan is a big deal. It is a crucial piece of this V2X puzzle.”

Automakers don’t appear adverse to the plan. These days, automotive companies seem convinced that they can pivot seamlessly to software service businesses that just happen to manufacture vehicles. The car is effectively being transformed into a big smartphone on wheels, because industry leaders believe it’ll be more financially lucrative and the government seems willing to pay to help them.

“The Department has reached a key milestone today in laying out a national plan for the transportation industry that has the power to save lives and transform the way we travel,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, in a statement. “The Department recognizes the potential safety benefits of V2X, and this plan will move us closer to nationwide adoption of this technology.”

Frankly, a lot of this emphasis on technology seems wrongheaded. Accident rates have spiked following the normalization of smartphones and implementation of distracting touchscreens into modern automobiles. Your author would bet good money that those items have both had a significant impact on roadway safety and there are numerous studies to support that claim.

Government regulations have likewise encouraged automakers to build increasingly massive vehicles, creating a sizing disparity that undoubtedly contributes to the rise in vehicular fatalities. That’s not to say that this is all the fault of regulators or even the industry. But it does seem that federal agencies are looking in the wrong place in terms of how to improve safety. There are simpler, arguably better, solutions that don’t require the acceleration of mass data harvesting or further subsidizing the tech and automotive industries over the next decade.

I am exceedingly curious to hear what our readers think and would encourage them to browse through the V2X deployment plan themselves.

[Images: USDOT]