Behind the Scenes: Lessons Learned from the Greatest Intervehicular Accident Detection Test Ever

This paper describes a few aspects of the work that led to the first experiments ever carried out on the road with an accident warning system based on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications. The mentioned experiments were performed in Los Angeles as part of a collaboration project between two teams, one from the University of Bologna and one from UCLA. In essence, driving along a few of the most crowded streets of LA and mounting on each vehicle an 802.11 based communication system, an accident warning dissemination algorithm was took for a test ride. The tested algorithm demonstrated being both in theory and simulation the optimal one, as it could successfully deal with realistic asymmetric links always choosing the optimal relay. However, a practical assessment was lacking. This required an important research and financial investment, as an accident warning system based on V2V technologies was never tested before. On the basis of that pioneering experience, we here revisit its “behind the scenes” results and the lessons we learned. In fact, we believe that those experiments provide new insights and point new possible directions of work. The contribution of this paper, hence, goes beyond the sharing of information, as its scope is also that of providing a vision of how vehicular research can be applied in practical terms when taken on the road.