Wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communications (V2V) and the safety applications enabled by such technology are a major component of the U.S. DOT vehicle safety communications (VSC) program. The VSC program also supports wireless connectivity between vehicles and infrastructure (V2I) to deliver safety, mobility, and environmental benefits. To date, the focus of US DOT sponsored research in this area has been on light duty vehicles. However, to obtain maximum benefits, the V2V safety applications need to be deployed among all vehicles including heavy commercial vehicles. The U.S. DOT therefore initiated (in early 2010) several research efforts to examine the issues for adapting V2V safety applications for heavy commercial vehicles. These issues include interoperability with other vehicles, considerations due to vehicle size and geometry, data privacy and policy concerns, compatibility between heavy and light vehicles, and other issues related to special operating environments encountered by commercial vehicles. This paper describes the current technical research on V2V for commercial vehicles being conducted by U.S. DOT (i.e., interoperability, performance requirements and human factors considerations). For each of these studies, interviews were conducted with subject matter experts from the following entities: vehicle manufacturers; truck suppliers, commercial vehicle fleet operators, industry trade representatives, and academic researchers. The early V2V safety applications to be developed for heavy vehicles have been selected based on the most frequent crash types addressable by such technology as identified in previous studies conducted by Volpe. The studies summarized in this paper were limited to commercial vehicles including heavy truck tractors, single-unit trucks, and buses. Results from the studies identify priority issues that need to be addressed for successful deployment of V2V systems on commercial vehicles.
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