NHTSA says technology could eliminate 80 percent of vehicle crashes

Technology allowing vehicles to communicate with each other on the road could eliminate up to 80 percent of vehicle crashes, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication "really has a tremendous amount of promise to save lives," Strickland said in his keynote address April 26 at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit.

NHTSA is working with automakers and other government agencies to ramp up the introduction of connected-vehicle technology, such as crash warning systems and lane departure alerts. He said the results of an ongoing study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, which is testing vehicle communication technology in Ann Arbor, would help guide the agency's next steps.

"The next North Star is keeping the crash from ever happening in the first place," Strickland was quoted as saying in the Detroit Free Press. "We are hard at work from a research standpoint at figuring out the systems that have promise Š so that one day we may see deeper penetration in the fleet."

One of NHTSA¹s primary goals in reducing driver distraction is ensuring that in-vehicle technology systems that connect to digital devices are easy to use and allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road.

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