Development and Evaluation of Alternative Concepts for Wireless Roadside Truck and Bus Safety Inspections

Download or read book Development and Evaluation of Alternative Concepts for Wireless Roadside Truck and Bus Safety Inspections written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focused on developing and analyzing various concepts of operation that would link advanced onboard vehicle and driver monitoring technologies with a means of wirelessly communicating such information to local enforcement agencies in order to improve the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of the North American Standard (NAS) roadside safety inspection program. The hypothesis which prompted the study was that wireless inspection technology could be widely deployed at both traditional and virtual inspection sites to dramatically increase the number of inspections completed, and to improve pre-screening of vehicles for more detailed manual inspections. Information about the condition of the vehicle and the driver would be assembled electronically in a standard safety data message set and then transmitted to the infrastructure, using dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) technology. Concepts developed were differentiated from current electronic pre-screening programs in that real-time information about the vehicle and driver would be conveyed. Based on a review of inspection and crash data, as well as discussions with the commercial motor vehicle (CMV) industry, the high-level requirements for a wireless commercial vehicle inspection concept should focus on gathering data related to the brakes, tires, lighting systems, Hours-of-Service (HOS), commercial drivers license (CDL) information, carrier identity, and vehicle identification number (VIN). All of this information already exists on the vehicle (via discrete sensor systems or electronic control modules) and, by using conventional technologies, could be electronically linked to the serial databus for subsequent transmission to the infrastructure access points. This information, when combined with the historical information already available on carriers and drivers accessible via Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) and/or State CMV databaseswould provide the enforcement community with a very powerful decision support tool for screening vehicles and/or implementing virtual, automated, wireless inspection sites.