The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) will host a webinar on May 22 to discuss the Intersection Safety Challenge Prize Competition, which launched on April 25, 2023.

Each year, roughly one-quarter of traffic fatalities and about one-half of all traffic injuries in the United States are attributed to intersections. According to the latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an estimated 42,939 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2021, a 10.1% increase compared to 39,007 fatalities reported in 2020. From 2020 to 2021, pedestrian and pedalcyclist fatalities and injuries increased at an alarming rate. For example, pedestrian fatalities increased 13% and pedestrian injuries increased 11% from 2020 to 2021. In response to growing concerns regarding the safety of vulnerable road users at intersections and as part of the recent National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS) Call to Action, the DOT aims to transform intersection safety through the innovative application of emerging technologies to identify and mitigate unsafe conditions involving vehicles and vulnerable road users.

To help address this growing problem and support U.S. DOT’s vision, U.S. DOT is launching the Intersection Safety Challenge. This Challenge includes a multi-stage Prize Competition to encourage teams of innovators and end-users to develop and test their intersection safety systems (ISS) to compete for up to $6 million total in prizes.

The Challenge is considering the potential of emerging technologies to transform intersection safety and ensure equity among all road users (including vehicles and vulnerable road users). Leveraging emerging technologies to anticipate, prevent, and mitigate unsafe roadway conditions could augment traditional safety engineering in roadway design and intersection control. These emerging technologies could include machine vision, machine perception, sensor fusion, real-time decision-making, artificial intelligence, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications (among other approaches). These technologies in most cases rely on real-time decision-making informed by data ingested and analyzed from multiple sensor systems.

The webinar will discuss the U.S. DOT Intersection Safety Challenge Prize Competition, including a program overview, the Prize Competition structure, and Stage 1A expectations.

For more information about the program, please visit the program website: https://its.dot.gov/isc. For more information about the ITS JPO, please visit: https://www.its.dot.gov/.

U.S. DOT Webinar: Intersection Safety Challenge Prize Competition