NHTSA’s traffic safety report is truly shocking
NHTSA’s latest estimate of road fatalities in 2021 is a truly shocking look at traffic safety, almost 43 thousand people died in traffic crashes. Particularly striking is the 13 percent increase in pedestrian fatalities, and that fatalities in urban environments have increased by 16 percent.
It’s the worst road safety situation in 16 years
Looking at this data, you stop and think about what could be done better, where to intervene. We have been living with this problem for a long time. We believe that today’s technologies offer a solution. As technology suppliers, it is not our job to set the US road safety strategy. We can only welcome and encourage the efforts that NHTSA and USDOT are making to improve the situation.
We can see part of this effort in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides $6 billion over five years to support local initiatives to improve road safety. It is good to see that the Highway Safety Improvement Program explicitly supports the deployment of data-driven road safety solutions, with a significantly increased budget. This is an area where Commsignia is providing a range of solutions: V2X roadside units, on-board units and the Central data management software for data analytics.
Based on our worldwide cooperation with car manufacturers, there is great interest in V2X, one of the most affordable sensor technologies with huge potential for both traffic safety and efficient traffic management. Commsignia has also developed a range of solutions to protect vulnerable road users. We have developed a special V2X solution for cyclists with our partners, and we can also improve safety for non-connected road users. By using data from thousands of smart sensors installed along the roads, cities can use our devices either for real-time interventions or use the insights to improve the infrastructure.
We are doing our best to help road safety efforts, as we did in the 10 years since Commsignia’s founding.
Dive deep into the data here in the NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts – PDF: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813298