In this project, a speed alert and augmented enforcement system (aSE) was developed with a combination of sensing, image processing and recognition, wireless communication. The system includes a speed camera that captures speeding vehicles, and a changeable message sign that displays speeder’s license plate number and measured speed, and a web page that allows police officers to monitor the incidence of violators traveling at excessive speeds. The aSE system was field tested for a work zone application on a rural highway. With data collected over multiple weeks, under a baseline scenario without the use of the aSE system and test cases with the system, it was shown that the system was effective in reducing the number of vehicles moving in excess of the speed limit.

The Mobile Millennium project provided a platform for aggregating traffic information across various sources, including infrastructure sensors, commercial data feeds, probe vehicles, and probe cell phones. The Networked Traveler project provided the California PATH instrumented research vehicle platform used to both deliver vehicle probe data back to the infrastructure and to generate Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) alerts to the drivers of those vehicles. The main theme of this collaboration project was to demonstrate the potential to create Enhanced Probe Vehicles (EPVs) by merging vehicle CAN-bus data with the typical GPS data that is provided by normal probe vehicles. The first goal of this project was integrate the two systems, allowing the instrumented research vehicles to communicate with the Mobile Millennium traffic aggregation servers. The second goal was to enhance the data gathered and stored by the Mobile Millennium traffic aggregation server to include the enhanced information provided by the EPVs, specifically, to include hazard warning light activation events. The third and final goal of this project was to integrate the information provided by the EPVs to the traffic server into soft-safety alerts that could be provided to the drivers of the EPVs and demonstrate the prototype system. This report documents the systems that were built for the demonstration, and provides a short analysis of the system performance from data gathered through both a simulation and an on-the-road vehicle test

This report describes the development of an automated speed enforcement (aSE) system. The main function of the aSE system is to communicate relevant speed, violation, and hazard information to the stakeholders in the work zone context: drivers, CHP officers, and workers. The system consists of two sub-systems that can work jointly in an integrated manner as a whole but they can also be deployed and tested separately.

This report describes the SafeTrip-21, Networked Traveler Foresighted Driving Field Experiment conducted as part of the US DOT’s SafeTrip-21 initiative. This experiment developed and evaluated an Advanced Driver Assistance System providing soft-safety or situational awareness alerts regarding “Slow Traffic Ahead” when driving on a freeway. The Networked Traveler system detects slow traffic or queues at several thousand locations in the Bay area, monitors the locations and speeds of its test subjects as they drive, and determines if the driver is approaching the slow traffic fast enough to warrant an alert. If so, the system alerts the driver through an auditory interface. The desired outcome is a foresighted reduction in speed, resulting in a smoother overall transition into the oncoming traffic queue. The system aims to reduce the likelihood of end-of-queue crashes on freeways, this being a subset of the class of rear-end crashes. The hypothesis is tested by computing measures representing the Root Mean Square (RMS) Error of Speed, Peak Deceleration Rate, Mean Deceleration Rate, Deceleration Due to Braking, Pre-Braking Deceleration, and Time before the start of braking. Amongst these, the RMS Error of Speed across all subjects most clearly confirms the test hypothesis -enhanced situational awareness results in smoother driving.

The US DOT RITA Volpe Center entered into a cooperative agreement with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to establish the inaugural SafeTrip 21 field test site in the San Francisco Bay area [named Connected Traveler].  Specifically, the site encompasses I-880 from Oakland to San Jose on the east bay and from San Jose to just south of the San Francisco International Airport, along U.S. 101 and California State Route (SR) 82. The site includes the SR-84 Dumbarton Bridge toll crossing, which links I-880 and U.S. 101. Caltrans's partners include the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the University of California-Berkeley's California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH), the California Center  for Innovative Transportation, Nokia, Inc., NAVTEQ, Santa Clara  Valley Transportation Authority, and Nissan. The cost of the $12.4 million field test was funded by private and public sector partners, including the USDOT contribution, equally. (Public Roads, September/October 2008)