What Is Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII)?

Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) is a set of initiatives that encourage research and development for technology that will allow vehicles to interact with the roads they travel. The initiative's main goal is to improve the safety of America's roads, and it draws on disciplines such as electrical and transport engineering, computer science and automotive engineering. VII is focused on roads, but there are similar initiatives in place for other transport types. In highway engineering, improving a road's safety can increase its efficiency, and VII aims to improve on both efficiency and safety.

VII is a specialized branch of engineering that deals with the application and study of technology that links vehicles with roads as a safety measure. VII's goal is to allow vehicles to communicate with roads via on-board equipment, thereby improving convenience, efficiency and safety of transportation systems. It's based on the use of short-range communications, which use the IEEE 802.11 standard. The development of VIII has helped transportation departments, professional organizations and industy. The initiative has three goals: proving that VII works, getting shareholders to accept it, and development of laws and rules that address privacy concerns and increase the chances of the program's success.

Vehicle infrastructure integration would directly link every vehicle to those around it, and they would be able to swap data on speed, position, and possibly the awareness levels and intentions of their drivers. This could greatly improve road safety, by automatically braking and steering when necessary. The VII system is also intended to communicate with the roadway's infrastucture, allowing for real-time traffic updates and congestion management.

Current safety technology is reliant upon on-board vision and radar systems. VII can reduce rear-end crashes by looking out for obstructions both in front of and behind cars and applying the brakes when necessary. The technology is limited because it can only sense vehicle distance and speed when those vehicles are within its line of sight. It's not effective for left-turn failure to yield collisions, and it could cause the driver to lose control of the car when a head on collision is imminent. Rear-end crashes are typically less severe than head on, left turn or angled collisions. Because of that, current VII technology is not adequate for the needs of today's drivers and highways.