Digital roads and accident avoidance

Place: freeway to portland

Design problem: Accidents and other unexpected blockages to lanes on freeways can create dangerous situations for approaching traffic. For planned blockages (e.g. road work) trucks with programmable signs are used to redirect traffic out of a blocked lane (see above). Car accidents that block a lane typically attract a police or fire truck which turns on its emergency lights. The problem with these solutions is the proximity to the accident. Given the speed traffic travels at, approaching drivers are very close the actual accident by the time they first know about it and they still lack a good understanding of how to avoid it. It also results in rapid lane changes which can cause additional accidents. All of this results in a greater probability of grid locked traffic occuring before the problem area and less highway efficiency.

Potential solutions: Oncoming drivers need to be informed of a problem long before an accident, informed what to do to avoid it, in day or night, and in a reliable way so the 'crying wolf' phenomenon common in road work signs doesn't occur. What if we had 'smart' roads? Roads that had imbedded led lights in the pavement could animate arrow flashes pointing out of a lane, miles before a reported accident. Lane sensors or cameras could auto detect small numbers of stopped cars and auto trigger avoidance systems and alert the police. Even if this cost prohibitive, road location labels could enable people to call in an accident location to 911 and rapidly have the avoidance lights triggered for the corect location. We need digital roads.