Transportation Institute Works on Study That Could Display Traffic Signs Inside Vehicles

Virginia Tech News

“It’s an act as automatic as turning the ignition: You come to a stop sign at a traffic intersection and bring your car to a halt before proceeding. Even if no other vehicles are around, you stop. Often — not always — but often, this is a waste of time and gas. Fuel means money, and pollution. But what if you knew ahead of time that no other car was near the intersection? Why the need to stop?”

Researchers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Transportation Institute are exploring the idea of moving traffic signs from the side of the road and into vehicles via dashboard screens. An adaptable in-vehicle display would automatically warn drivers when to stop at an intersection and what other actions to take, if necessary.

Alexandria Noble, a master’s student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is spearheading a proof-of-concept adaptive stop-yield study with funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation. She recently finished a 17-week closed experiment at the Virginia Smart Road that involved dozens of participants in cars outfitted with small, global positioning system-like dashboard screens that would alert drivers on either side to stop or yield, and proceed through an intersection.

The entire transportation system would need to be overhauled to deploy such technology in the real world. The project directly ties into the institute’s growing push into connected-vehicle technology. “While a relatively new area in the transportation realm, adaptive stop/yield signs have the potential to be a long-term solution for not only minimizing traffic problems experienced on increasingly congested roadways, they may also help mitigate negative environmental impacts,” says institute director Thomas A. Dingus.  Report

DCL: This research obviously involves event pattern recognition and other CEP techniques. Again, an example of unawareness of the general underlying enabling technologies. Also this write-up seems totally unaware of the fact that as long as a human is driving, the problem is one of discipline. The human must always stop to avoid the possibility of error. This research should have been about self-driving cars.