Truck Intellidrive Workshop - April 21, 2010

Truck IntelliDrive Safety Workshop 

A Truck IntelliDrive Safety Workshop was held April 21, 2010 in conjunction with the annual CVSA workshop in San Antonio, TX.  Participants were asked to comment on current IntelliDrive efforts and to provide recommendations for future IntelliDrive activities. 

Please click here for a full summary of the workshop, or here for a listing of the workshop presentations.

Some of the key comments and recommendations to come out of the workshop are included below. 

Education and Outreach

The IntelliDriveSM program must continue to provide opportunities for interested stakeholders to provide guidance on how the program should be implemented.  Furthermore, the program must seek buy-in from stakeholders, thus enabling the partnerships that will be uniquely positioned to implement IntelliDriveSM successfully.

Outreach efforts must specifically target those stakeholder groups which are expected to experience the greatest barriers to program implementation.  For example, small motor carriers are known to face unique barriers to technology implementation.  Outreach efforts must seek to understand these barriers as implementation plans move forward. 

Business Concerns

The businesses that will be expected to adopt the IntelliDriveSM program have a number of considerations that must be examined.  First, a full accounting must be made of the expected costs of the program, throughout the program’s life cycle.  These costs may occur in a number of phases, including:

• Capital costs
• O&M costs
• Training costs
• Back-office system costs

As these costs are considered, efforts must be made to define and understand the expected return on investment (ROI) of the technology components of the IntelliDriveSM program.  To be feasible, these technology investments must accrue both short and long-term ROIs for the adopting business. 

Finally, we must understand the impact that the IntelliDriveSM program will have on these businesses’ current business models.  How will these models be required to change, and what work can be done on the front end to make the IntelliDrive program compatible with current best practices?

Policy Issues

Participants noted that the IntelliDriveSM program would need to mandate some baseline level of industry participation in order to realize full program benefits, as well as to ensure a level playing field across the industry.  This discussion point proved to be an important one, and the theme appeared many times with participants stressing the importance of “public-private partnerships”, a “mix of mandatory and voluntary”, “phased mandates”, and a “mandated baseline”.  Some participants were wary of defining exactly where the mandated baseline would lie without further research, though others ventured to make a few suggestions.  The latter participants recommended that the needed equipment (or communication capability) be mandated, while applications of that equipment would be voluntary. 

It was recommended that any mandates be phased in slowly, both to give fleets the time needed to implement the new requirements, as well as to provide a test case.  It was suggested that the phased mandate start with government fleets.  Similarly, it was recommended that the overall program be phased in slowly, with milestones along the way.  For example, it was suggested that implementation start with low-cost passive systems, and work toward active systems as all passenger cars begin to participate in the program. 

Above the mandated baseline level of participation, it was recommended that IntelliDriveSM participation be market-driven.  Thus, it was expected that the program as a whole would experience a mix of mandated and voluntary participation. 

It was noted that this mix of participation might be ideally achieved through a public-private partnership of stakeholders.  Such a partnership, participants thought, would reduce the need for regulatory solutions, and would allow the market to drive program implementation.

A key question raised repeatedly was that of program funding.  Specifically, which stakeholders would be responsible for funding program implementation?  Several proposed funding sources were named, including: government spending, loans, and insurance deductions.

Finally, participants noted significant concern regarding data usage, security, and privacy.  It was generally recommended that:

• Data originating in the IntelliDrive program should only be used for the original intended purpose specified at the outset of the program. 
• Questions of data ownership should be resolved before data is ever collected.

Technology Considerations

Participants stressed the importance of standardization across the IntelliDriveSM program; data, software, hardware, and interfaces were all named as significant candidates for standardization.  There was also some discussion on the nature of the Human Machine interface.  Participants concluded that care needs to be taken in making that interface function well.  Specifically, it was noted that the interface should communicate succinct, clear messages, and that research should be performed to determine the best form of communication (auditory, visual, etc). 

Crash avoidance was named as one of the most important objectives of the IntelliDriveSM program.  Participants indicated that crash data should be used to focus limited resources on the most severe and costly types of crashes.  In general, participants concluded that technology should be leveraged to create safety and mobility benefits.  For example, the ability to wirelessly identify drivers and vehicles would allow businesses to gain efficiencies by decreasing or eliminating inspection time on the side of the road.