Inventing, creating and guiding the future of transportation with a focus on safety.
A transportation future awaits where vehicles can drive themselves, connect to each other and the infrastructure, and are propelled by renewable energy sources. In this future, crashes are minimized, injuries significantly reduced, and fatalities almost entirely eliminated. Vulnerable users are safer and feel more comfortable on roads. Congestion decreases with the real-time exchange of traffic information. Communications are secure and private. Access to transportation is equitable. This revolutionary leap in our transportation network is enabled by a transformative approach, which offers safety and reliability in an equitable, sustainable and efficient fashion across multiple modes. Funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation as the National University Transportation Center for Safety and led by CMU, a birthplace of automated vehicles, Safety21 actively seeks to enable and accelerate this transformation to a safer, more efficient and equitable transportation network.
Where will the future of safe mobility take us?
Change is coming to transportation, whether we’re ready for it or not. We’re entering a transportation landscape rich with possibility and full of challenges.
Technological advances offer the promise of safety, efficiency, sustainability and improved access. However, the state of the art in vehicle autonomy is not mature enough for widespread deployment. Connectivity presents new threats to privacy and cyber-physical security. Recent roadway deaths of a pedestrian, motorcyclists and vehicle operators due to failures of autonomy features raise legitimate questions of trust and reliability. Much to our detriment, other countries can take over leadership in promising new technologies invented in the US. Given these crossroads, we must remain competitive by furnishing domestic industry and workers with the technology, policy frameworks and training that are sorely needed. With all of this in mind, Safety21, the National University Transportation Center has launched. By leveraging new technologies and revolutionary trends in transportation, Safety21 aims to research, develop and deploy cutting edge technologies, policies, and develop workforce and educational programs that directly address the challenges of integrating Autonomous, Connected, Electric and Shared vehicles (ACES) with a transformative focus on safety, equity, sustainability and economic growth.
