Conceptual Development and Performance Assessment for the Development Staging of Advanced Vehicle Control and Safety Systems

This report documents work for Task Order 4230 that was follow-on work to prior research performed at PATH under Task Order 366. The current work continued to expand our understanding of the issues involved with time-staging the deployment of advanced vehicle control and safety systems (AVCSS) to help lead toward future automated highway systems. The time-staging challenge has long been identified as one of the most significant impediments to deployment, particularly because of the "chicken and egg" problem associated with vehicle and infrastructure technology implementation. These "chicken and egg" deployment challenges are also being investigated on an international scale. As part of this project we also conducted a detailed review of the international status of AVCSS development and deployment, in collaboration with the European Commission's STARDUST project and provides a comprehensive picture of the status of these technologies not only in the U.S., but also in Japan and Europe. In terms of the time-staging aspects of AVCSS deployment, heavy vehicle opportunities are likely to develop earliest, however, the largest potential benefits are still likely when the technologies are applied to the much larger population of passenger cars.