WILL WEATHER DAMPEN SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES?

Abstract

Self-driving vehicles will revolutionize society; however, their safe and reliable implementation in all weather conditions requires critical partnerships between the meteorological, transportation, and vehicle manufacturer communities.Innovative technologies that support implementation of automated vehicles continue to develop at a rapid pace. These advances strive to increase efficiency and safety throughout the global transportation network. One important challenge to these emergent technologies that remains under-appreciated is how the vehicles will perform in adverse weather. Each year, weather-related vehicular crashes account for approximately 21% of all highway crashes in the United States. These crashes result in over 5,300 fatalities, injure over 418,000 people, and cost billions of dollars in insurance claims, liability, emergency services, congestion delays, rehabilitation, and environmental damage annually. Automated vehicles have the potential to significantly mitigate these statistics; however, public, private, and academic partnerships between the meteorological and transportation communities must be established to develop solutions to weather impacts now. To date, such interactions have been sparse and largely contribute to a lack of awareness in how these two communities may collaborate together. The purpose of this manuscript is to call the meteorological community to action and proactive engagement with the transportation community. A secondary goal is to make the transportation community aware of the advantages of teaming with the weather enterprise. Automated vehicles will not only increase travel safety, but also have benefits to the meteorological community through increasing availability of high resolution surface data observations. The future challenges of these emergent technologies in the context of road weather implications focus on vehicle situational awareness and technological sensing capability in all weather conditions, and transforming how drivers and vehicles are informed of weather threats beyond sensing capabilities.