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Happy, and Safe, Motoring! Safety Warning System will undergo field tests
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The nation's highways could become safer and more efficient within the next few years as more motorists and public agencies begin using a commercially available traffic hazard warning system developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1996.
photo by Joann Vitelli
GTRI researcher Gene Greneker is refining and field testing a
device he developed called the Safety Warning System (SWS). On the
market since 1996, SWS is a microwave-based communications system that
gives motorists a 25- to 30-second warning of hazardous traffic and
highway conditions ahead.
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The Safety Warning System (SWS), a microwave-based
communications system, gives motorists a 25- to 30-second warning of
hazardous traffic and highway conditions ahead. Messages are delivered
via automated mobile or fixed-site transmitters and received by either
advanced, in-vehicle receivers or older model
radar detectors in
individual vehicles.
Available on the market since 1996, SWS is now being refined and field tested by
the Georgia Tech researchers who first developed it at the request of a consortium of
radar detector manufacturers. New capabilities under study may allow traffic
managers to transmit specific details on traffic problems just ahead. The three-year
project, which started in October 1998, is being funded by a $2.1 million grant from
the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).
"SWS is an inexpensive, functional and available in-vehicle safety system that
fits the concept of an intelligent transportation system," says SWS inventor and
senior research engineer Gene Greneker of the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
"But we want to make it do even smarter things."
SWS is now part of more than four million advanced radar detectors in use in
the United States today, and its signal can be picked up by about 15 million older
model detectors, as well. Its manufacturers are BEL-Tronics, Santeca, Uniden and
Whistler. SWS has received preliminary approval and is awaiting final approval
from the Federal Communications Commission, and a patent is pending. The
current model sells for about $200, but manufacturers are developing an SWS-only
detector that will sell for about $100.
SWS alerts drivers to real-time hazards, dangerous weather and other traffic
conditions with an audible alarm, one of 64 pre-programmed text messages shown
to drivers on a light-emitting diode display (LED) and/or synthesized voice message.
Five categories of messages are incorporated in the SWS messaging system. They
are: warnings for highway construction or maintenance zones; weather-related
hazard messages; highway hazard advisories; travel and convenience information;
and fast/slow-moving vehicle warnings.
The DOT grant for refining and testing SWS was part of an allocation Congress
approved last summer. It also provides DOT funds for grants to state and local
governments to purchase SWS and study its efficacy. Greneker will use his grant to
conduct extensive field tests of SWS fixed-site and mobile-unit transmitters. He also
plans to investigate the feasibility of adding variable text messaging to SWS fixed-
site transmitters. That would allow public safety and highway officials to program
the transmitters with specific messages.
Greneker is collaborating with Dr. John Leonard, a Tech assistant professor of
civil engineering, in conducting a one-year SWS fixed-site transmitter test in metro
Atlanta. It will involve as many as 500 participants and be the largest scale test to
date.
"We will also be testing the SWS transmitters mounted on police cars,"
Greneker says. "We want to see how durable and reliable the signal strength is
under a variety of conditions."
The other part of the DOT-funded study will add modem, and thus variable text
messaging, capability to fixed-site SWS transmitters, Greneker says. A two-way
modem link between the transmitter and an Advanced Traffic Management Center
could deliver a traffic manager's alternate route messages to motorists in urban
areas. In rural areas, fixed site transmitters could be equipped with microprocessors
and smart software. The system would collect radar-derived speed data to determine
the speed of the traffic flow, then analyze it and decide if a traffic advisory message
should be sent to motorists alerting them to problems ahead.
SWS L.C., the organization licensing the technology, has placed SWS
transmitters in 26 states with school buses, trains, police departments and
departments of transportation since 1997. These transmitters have a 1.5-mile range
and cost about $900 each. By the end of 1999, the consortium expects to have "a
significant infrastructure in place," a spokesman says. SWS L.C. estimates that the
sale of SWS products will grow by more than two million each year as transmitter
installations become more widespread.
photo by Joann Vitelli
The Safety Warning System is now part of more than four million
advanced radar detectors in use in the United States today, and its
signal can be picked up by about 15 million older model detectors, as
well.
For more information, you may contact Gene
Greneker, Sensors and Electromagnetic
Applications Laboratory, Georgia
Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0856. (Telephone:
770/528-7744)
(E-mail: gene.greneker@gtri.gatech.edu). You may also
visit the SWS L.C. Web site at
www.swslc.com.
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