Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication technology, collectively known as V2X, has the potential to save hundreds of lives by allowing cars to talk with another as well as traffic infrastructure to avoid accidents. That's why the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) concluded a year-long, 3,000-vehicle V2X field trial in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2013, and has taken the first steps toward mandating V2V technology on all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S.
When NHTSA announced its intention to move forward with requiring V2V, which uses a Wi-Fi-like technology that exchanges data such the position and speed of a vehicle 10 times per second, on all new vehicles, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has said that technology can "help drivers avoid 70 to 80 percent of crashes." And while the life-saving potential of V2X is clear and its adoption seems inevitable, the implementation of the technology raises not only privacy issues, but also concerns that it could become a traffic Robocop.
NHTSA has stated V2X technology is not intended for law-enforcement purposes, and that the data transmitted via the existing system is not yet granular enough to assign speed calculations to individual drivers. But in the first acknowledgement of the technical feasibility of using V2X for traffic-law enforcement, NHTSA acting administrator David Friedman said that it is possible.
"The technology is there, but our initial design is not focused on that," Friedman said last month at a conference of transportation officials in Michigan. He also raised concerns that if V2V is used for law enforcement, consumer acceptance of a technology designed to save lives could hit a roadblock due to negative public reaction. "I know there is potential for law enforcement to optimize some of these things," he added, "but if we go too far, too fast in that direction, it could create some consumer backlash that could hurt its adoption."
If the current use of speed- and red-light cameras—and the feeling towards them by consumers and some politicians—are any indication, Friedman's concerns are well founded. The city of St. Petersburg, Florida pulled the plug on its red-light cameras at the beginning of this month, in part because they were causing more accidents. And other areas are considering similar measures for reasons that ranging from privacy to politics.
John Bowman, communications director at the National Motorists Association, which lobbies for driver's rights, told Autoblog that "it's too tempting" not to use V2X for traffic-law enforcement. And even if NHTSA is concerned that public backlash to being tracked and getting a traffic ticket could derail its rollout of V2X, its use for law enforcement won't fall within the fed's jurisdiction once the technology is in place.
Former NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said, "Traffic enforcement is in the purview of the states." But he added that, while using V2X for automatic ticketing "may be technically possible ... I don't think it would be accepted by consumers."
Strickland also noted that if V2X is used for law enforcement, as with red light and speed cameras, the drivers would have to be notified on the use of the technology. As an example, he points to the signs he sees during his daily commute between Washington D.C. and Virginia that alert drivers to the presence of red-light cameras.
Such notification—as well as legal and privacy issues—would be more complicated if V2X technology when applied nationwide. "It brings up the larger issue of simply tracking vehicles in real time," said Bowman. "You'd literally be able to track every car on the transportation grid 24/7, and that gets to issues beyond enforcement with personal privacy and things we're more concerned about these days with revelations from the NSA."