Metro Atlanta area university to study highway deaths, crashes nationally

KENNESAW, Ga. — An assistant professor at Kennesaw State University will lead a national research initiative focused on vehicle safety and reducing accidents across the United States.

According to a release from KSU, Billy Kihei, an assistant professor of computer engineering, will lead research funded by the National Science Foundation.

The goal of the research is to improve vehicle safety through cutting-edge sensing and communication technologies, KSU said in a statement.

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The research at KSU follows recent reports by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimating at least 40,000 people died on the road in 2023.

In Georgia, NHTSA reported there were 1,638 traffic fatalities that year.

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To make that happen, the Kihei-led project will focus on cellular vehicle-to-everything technology, or C-V2X, which lets vehicles “communicate directly with each other, potentially reducing up to 80% of crashes involving non-impaired drivers.”

The research comes as the U.S. readies to roll out what KSU calls “the largest wireless communications technology for automotive safety,” which many vehicles on the road do not currently have.

To explore how the new communications tech can be used alongside vehicles that do not have the same technology, Kihei’s research team will use a methodology called integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) to study the interactions.

“The concept is to use the signal from C-V2X to passively sense the environment around the vehicle,” Kihei said in a statement. “This enables the vehicle to detect potential collisions even if it is the only one transmitting. “We are initially focused on preventing rear-end collisions.”

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