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Smart Road photo by Michael Kiernan

• Truck safety research, including investigating causes of crashes such as icy roads and mechanical malfunctions, evaluating sensor technologies for early detection of crash causes, and assessing means for transmitting and displaying warnings. • Passenger Information Systems Research, which included vehicle location technology such as GPS and GIS to report bus locations. • Adaptive cruise control, including early stage simulations and evaluations of car-following algorithms. • Incident detection and management, including developing new sensing systems such as lasers, video image processing, and acoustic and cell phone technologies designed to im prove the quality of traffic data from traffic control centers. The aim was to develop a comprehensive incident database to facilitate timely decision making. • Human factors projects, including in-vehicle electronic display legibility and usability evaluations, auditory signal design, and driver mental workload assessment. • Real-time diversion strategies, an ongoing project since 1988 to develop a comprehensive traffic diversion deployment system to relieve congestion. The Center for Transportation Research was eventually named one of three national Intelligent Vehicle/Highway System (IVHS) Research Centers of Excellence by the Intelligent Transportation

Society of America. These centers are charged with serving as “internationally recognized university-based organizations that ag gressively develop and implement activities that advance the state of the art in IVHS.” The award brought $5 million during the next five years, with $3.5 million in matching funds from public and private affiliates.

“In 1996, theVirginia Department of Transpor tation and the Federal Highway Administration were our largest sponsors. Now we have more than 40 sponsors.”

-- Tom Dingus, director of VTTI

A Turning Point for the Smart Road Since opening, the Smart Road has logged more than 16,500 hours of research. This research includes assessing the benefits and potential problems of a large number of advanced vehicle systems such as active safety systems. For more than a decade, the tech nologies tested on the Smart Road have ultimately been placed

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