A Research Roadmap for Substantially Improving Safety for Transit Buses through Autonomous Braking Assistance for Operators

The purpose of this paper is to lay the groundwork for development of autonomous collision avoidance and autonomous emergency braking for transit buses. Although significant progress is being made in bringing autonomous collision avoidance and autonomous emergency braking to automobiles and trucks, the transit industry is being left behind. Bus transit is one of the safest ways to travel in the United States. Bus passengers are more than three times safer than automobile passengers when comparing the rate of fatalities per 100 million passenger miles. However, buses can be made even safer. Data from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) National Transit Database (NTD) show that buses and vanpools have been involved in 85,391 collisions, experienced 1,340 fatalities, 201,382 injuries between 2002 and 2014, and created expenditures for casualty and liability expenses of $5.7 billion between 2002 and 2013. Included in these data are 56 fatalities and 16,312 injuries involving bus transit workers. The authors lay out a draft research roadmap for the adaptation to buses of proven technology that has been shown to reduce collisions and claims for automobiles. The objectives are first to educate the industry on the magnitude of the problem, second, to provide a draft program that would lead to the desired outcomes, and third, to seek stakeholder involvement to refine the program and support to seek funding for it.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP040 Standing Committee on Automated Transit Systems. Alternate title: Research Roadmap for Substantially Improving Safety for Transit Buses Through Autonomous Assistance for Operators.
  • Corporate Authors:

    Transportation Research Board

    500 Fifth Street, NW
    Washington, DC  United States  20001
  • Authors:
    • Lutin, Jerome M
    • Kornhauser, Alain
    • Spears, Jerry
    • Sanders, Louis F
  • Conference:
  • Date: 2016

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 14p
  • Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01587746
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 16-1246
  • Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
  • Created Date: Jan 27 2016 5:11PM