Signals Crossed

According to the New York Times, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued a safety recommendation "asking technology and delivery companies to add the exact locations of more than 200,000 grade crossings into digital maps and to provide alerts when drivers encounter them." The recommendation was issued after a nearly two-year investigation of a fatal truck crash at a railroad crossing in California. Maybe the NTSB will have better luck than the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) which made a similar recommendation more than 18 months ago.

https://tinyurl.com/h84m398 - "Rail Crossing Warnings Are Sought for Mapping Apps" - NYTimes

The question both agencies should be asking is: Where is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)? The FRA and NTSB appear to agree that mobile navigation apps are both a contributing and a mitigating factor to railroad crossing crashes, but neither agency has any leverage with the developers of mobile apps. In fact, there is no Federal agency with authority over mobile apps, but at least NHTSA has a voice governing built-in navigation systems in cars.

Between 200 and 300 people are losing their lives every year - about one per day - in crashes occurring at railroad crossings, according to FRA data. In several of these crashes truck and car drivers have been shown to be using smartphone-based navigation systems that might have alerted them to the proximity of danger in the form of an insufficiently protected or identified rail crossing.

Both the FRA and NTSB have focused on the providers ot smartphone-based navigation to convince them to add railroad crossing location information and alerts to ward of heedless drivers of cars and trucks. The NYTimes reports that the FRA said it had contacted 11 technology companies, including Apple and Microsoft, to integrate the location data of grade crossings provided by the FRA. The NYTimes article also notes that portable navigation provider Garmin "included safety warnings for potential hazards like sharp turns and railroad crossings ... although it does not use the federal rail location data."

The NYTimes article further notes: "The railroad agency said Google had agreed to add audio and visual warnings to Google Maps, the world’s most popular mapping app, based on grade-crossing location data. But Google has not yet included that feature, even though it has updated the app more than two dozen times for the iPhone since then."

Herein lies the struggle of Federal regulators: Can or should Federal regulators be able to define how navigation applications on mobile phones and in cars work? And, if Federal regulators have this authority or take on this responsibility, what entity will then be responsible for any liability associated with the quality and accuracy of this information or even the nature of the warnings?

For years, navigation apps have been steering hapless drivers into ponds or into oncoming traffic. Popular navigation app Waze has been known to steer tourists and even Israeli Defense Force soldiers into dangerous neighborhoods with fatal or near-fatal consequences.

The government has an interest in guiding citizens away from danger or illegal circumstances. Several cities have collaborated with Waze to convince the company to alter its routing algorithms where the guidance has put drivers onto restricted roadways - such as San Francisco's Market Street.

The technology exists to alert drivers to hazardous conditions ahead of them including signaled intersections, railroad crossings, school zones and the like. There is a long history of not providing such alerts because it implies a responsibility to provide them in all instances along with a corresponding legal liability.

In the case of railroad crossings, the required data is subject to change on a daily or weekly basis as crossings are updated with new signals and alerts or, in fact, new crossings are created or old ones relocated. This does pose a challenge for the creators of built-in navigation systems, but cars ought to have this situational awareness built in.

Wireless carriers may well have a responsibility to deliver this information in the same fashion that amber alerts and other emergency messages are delivered to smartphones. Carriers have visibility to the movement of mobile devices in and around hazardous areas and ought to be able to use map-as-a-sensor technology to warn those users appropriately and wirelessly.

For it to be effective in cars, the built-in system will need a means for keeping the data fresh in the form of either a wireless cellular connection or some sort of software update capability. NHTSA is in the right position to promote deployment of in-dash maps and the sharing of hazard alerts via cellular connections.

It is frustrating that the NHTSA, the FRA and the NTSB are hamstrung by their limited ability to convince and cajole the mobile app and automotive industries with guidelines and recommendations. Ironically, the FRA and the NTSB are indirectly encouraging the use of smartphone-based navigation which may be contributing to driver distraction which, itself, is blamed for more than 3,000 annual highway fatalies in the U.S. - or nearly 10/day, according to the NHTSA.

It seems as if something more affirmative is called for short of a mandate. While "mandate" sounds impressive, the reality is that NHTSA's mandate process is a multi-year affair with an unreliable outcome.

We have the technology to alert drivers and avert crashes. The technology is already available from Global Mobile Alert. It is possible that in the future beacons could be installed to notify drivers of dangerous circumstances, neighborhoods and trouble spots. In the meantime, the moment has arrived to more intelligently use the digital map as a sensor for identifying and warning drivers when they are exceeding speed limits, going too fast for an upcoming curve, driving the wrong way or, indeed, in the proximity of a railroad crossing, school zone or signaled intersection.

We have the technology. Do we really need the Government to tell us what to do with it? Give me an alert in my in-dash navigation system, please.

Roger C. Lanctot is Associate Director in the Global Automotive Practice at Strategy Analytics. More details about Strategy Analytics can be found here: https://www.strategyanalytics.com/access-services/automotive#.VuGdXfkrKUk