It is inspiring to notice that legislation that helps incorporate autonomous vehicles on our roads in the near future is moving forward. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDoT), has integrated automated vehicles into the existing safety standards, in that the text in the standards do not rely on the existence of steering wheels and driver’s seats, which may not exist in fully autonomous vehicles.

In addition, the NHTSA has incorporated lane-keeping support, pedestrian automatic emergency braking, blind spot detection, and blind spot intervention into its Five-Star Safety Ratings program. Such driver-assistance technologies are the first steps toward fully autonomous vehicles but, more importantly, toward safer ones. Developing safer vehicles requires significant investments, so it is important that the legislation provide a framework that is predictable, reducing the risk of long-term commitment.

While legislation efforts are favoring autonomous vehicles, the same cannot be said for connected vehicles. According to Katrin Sjöberg in an article from IEEE VT Magazine’s December 2021 issue, “Ad hoc V2X [vehicle-to-everything] communication is essential for automated vehicles, and 4G/5G connectivity is important.”

However, for ad hoc communications to take place, reserved spectrum is needed. The 75-MHz spectrum previously reserved for V2X communications on the 5.9-GHz band has been opened up for consumer electronics equipment and cellular networks by the authorities.

This is due to an argument from the consumer electronics market that more spectrum is needed and that the vehicular industry has not been making good use of its available spectrum.

Full Article: IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Volume 17, Number 2, June 2022

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