Method and apparatus for determining traffic safety events using vehicular participative sensing systems

A method for identifying hazardous driving conditions using vehicular participative sensing systems, said method comprising:

• providing data about traffic safety events by a plurality of participative sensing system vehicles, including monitoring data from vehicle sensors and systems, identifying a trigger event, computing a safety metric about the traffic safety event, and wirelessly communicating the safety metric and a vehicle location to a server computer;
• collecting, on the server computer including a processor and memory, the data about the traffic safety events from the participative sensing system vehicles;
• analyzing the data about the traffic safety events, by the server computer, to identify hazardous conditions, including segregating the hazardous conditions into those that relate to behavior of specific other vehicles and their drivers, those that relate to chronic conditions that repeatedly occur at a particular fixed location on a roadway, and those that relate to transient conditions at various locations on the roadway;
• issuing advisories about the hazardous conditions from the server computer to advisory-receiving vehicles, where the advisories include a type of the hazardous condition and a location of the hazardous condition;
• notifying drivers of the advisory-receiving vehicles of the hazardous conditions described in the advisories;
• and
• issuing advisories about the hazardous conditions from the server computer to a road commission which has responsibility for a road on which the hazardous condition exists, where the advisories include advisories of conditions needing immediate attention including road repair, snow plowing and road salt, and electronic sign message content, and advisories of chronic conditions needing long-term attention including road design changes and permanent road sign changes.

A vehicular participative sensing system for identifying hazardous driving conditions, said system comprising:

• a plurality of participative sensing system vehicles with sensors and a processor configured to provide data about traffic safety events, where the processor monitors data from vehicle dynamics sensors and object detection sensors, data from vehicle systems available on a vehicle data bus, and data about other vehicles from a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication system, said participative sensing system vehicles also including a wireless communications system for communicating the data about the traffic safety events;
• a server computer including a processor and memory, said server computer being configured to receive the data about the traffic safety events from the participative sensing system vehicles, analyze the data about the traffic safety events to identify hazardous conditions, and issue advisories about the hazardous conditions, where the advisories include a type of the hazardous condition and a location of the hazardous condition, and where analyzing the data includes aggregating the data, filtering the data, applying a time-decay to the data and purging the data;
• and
• a plurality of advisory-receiving vehicles with a wireless communications system for receiving the advisories about the hazardous conditions, and a processor configured to notify drivers of the hazardous conditions described in the advisories.

A vehicular participative sensing system for identifying hazardous driving conditions, said system comprising:

• a plurality of participative sensing system vehicles with sensors and a processor configured to provide data about traffic safety events, where the processor monitors data from vehicle dynamics sensors and object detection sensors, data from vehicle systems available on a vehicle data bus, and data about other vehicles from a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication system, said participative sensing system vehicles also including a wireless communications system for communicating the data about the traffic safety events;
• a server computer including a processor and memory, said server computer being configured to receive the data about the traffic safety events from the participative sensing system vehicles, analyze the data about the traffic safety events to identify hazardous conditions, and issue advisories about the hazardous conditions, where the advisories include a type of the hazardous condition and a location of the hazardous condition, where analyzing the data includes segregating the hazardous conditions into those that relate to behavior of specific other vehicles and their drivers, those that relate to chronic conditions that repeatedly occur at a particular fixed location on a roadway, and those that relate to transient conditions at various locations on the roadway;
• and
• a plurality of advisory-receiving vehicles with a wireless communications system for receiving the advisories about the hazardous conditions, and a processor configured to notify drivers of the hazardous conditions described in the advisories.

A vehicular participative sensing system for identifying hazardous driving conditions, said system comprising:

• a plurality of participative sensing system vehicles with sensors and a processor configured to provide data about traffic safety events, where the processor monitors data from vehicle dynamics sensors and object detection sensors, data from vehicle systems available on a vehicle data bus, and data about other vehicles from a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication system, said participative sensing system vehicles also including a wireless communications system for communicating the data about the traffic safety events;
• a server computer including a processor and memory, said server computer being configured to receive the data about the traffic safety events from the participative sensing system vehicles, analyze the data about the traffic safety events to identify hazardous conditions, and issue advisories about the hazardous conditions, where the advisories include a type of the hazardous condition and a location of the hazardous condition, where the advisories are designated as watch-level advisories related to moderately hazardous conditions or warning-level advisories related to severely hazardous conditions;
• and
• a plurality of advisory-receiving vehicles with a wireless communications system for receiving the advisories about the hazardous conditions, and a processor configured to notify drivers of the hazardous conditions described in the advisories.