Researchers to Design 'Smart' Traffic Signs

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Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies (CTS) have joined forces with the Minnesota Department of Transportation to develop new technology to make dangerous intersections safer.

Some 600 traffic fatalities occur on Minnesota roads each year, of which about a third take place in intersections.
Max Donath, director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute within CTS, says that those accidents are avoidable.

“There is absolutely no reason why that has to happen; that driver could have seen a sign that could have warned them,” he says. The sign Donath envisions is a hi-tech interactive “talking” traffic sign that will beam information to drivers approaching an intersection.
“Cars will get smarter,” he says. “They will be wirelessly communicating information to the intersection. They will be collecting data from the intersection. They will communicate vehicle to vehicle.”

Ginny Crowson, a project manager with the Minnesota Department of Transportation, says that the project will lead not only to the building safer roads nationwide, but to car companies building smarter, safer cars. Refinements will include a steering wheel that vibrates when the car starts to veer off the road and a special dashboard light to warn drivers of oncoming vehicles.

The research is sponsored by Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems (CICAS), a four-year Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program partnership between the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), automobile manufacturers and State and local departments of transportation. Its purpose is to develop cooperative vehicle/infrastructure systems to address intersection crash problems related to stop sign and traffic signal violations, stop sign movements and unprotected left turns.

Some of the technology - including advanced traffic sensor networks and an advanced vehicle trajectory measurement and recording system - could be ready within the next few years, the researchers say.