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NHTSA Light-Vehicle Safety Evaluation | December 2015
This report presents the methodology and results of the independent evaluation of safety applications for passenger vehicles in the
2012-2013 Safety Pilot Model Deployment, part of the United States Department of Transportation’s Intelligent Transportation
Systems research program. In 2012, the pilot model deployed approximately 2,800 vehicles equipped with designated short-rangecommunication-based
vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure technology in a real-world driving environment. The
goals of the independent evaluation were to characterize the capability, assess unintended consequences, and gauge driver
acceptance of the V2V safety applications. The evaluation is based on naturalistic driving by 127 participants who drove passenger
vehicles with fully integrated V2V communication systems for 6 months each. Additionally, 293 participants drove passenger cars
with aftermarket communication systems for 12 months each. The 127 integrated-vehicle and 293 aftermarket-device participant’s
vehicles were equipped with a suite of V2V safety applications that issued alerts to participants in potential crash scenarios. The
results of the analysis suggest that V2V safety applications work in a real-world environment and issue valid alerts in driving
conflicts, but improvements in their ability to correctly differentiate imminent threats from various normal driving situations are
needed so as to reduce nuisance warnings. Results from the model deployment will help shape future research direction