(air whooshing)
- [Narrator] Autonomous vehicles
were once the thing of science fiction.
Today, we are near the reality
of these cars and trucks on US roads.
This will likely mean changes in roadway designs
to help maintain safe driving habits.
Because of the large number of roads statewide,
the Texas Department of Transportation
is set to be a leader in infrastructure
to accommodate these vehicles.
Researchers are looking at what changes
in road design standards will need to be implemented
to determine the safest
and most effective outcomes for drivers.
- Get ready for autonomous vehicles
because they're gonna come, either you like it or not.
It will probably start with freight
'cause freight has a lot of demand for that.
But eventually, it will filter down to passenger cars.
- Our current road infrastructure
is built for human drivers,
and as AVs continue to develop
and become more commonplace in the next decade,
there's a big need for us to rethink
and reshape our infrastructure for these AVs
because they see and behave differently than people do.
This research was led by the UTSA team, UT San Antonio,
along with the TxDOT Research team.
It was months of coming to the research and understanding.
Well, what are the research projects related to this
are happening across the nation?
- The project concentrated basically on impacts
on traffic flows,
and also it has the word parking on the title, okay?
Because I believe it's gonna be a strong interaction.
That's what we foresee
as a big impact for autonomous vehicles,
especially for the ones
that deal with passenger transportation.
- I think one of the biggest challenges
that we're seeing still
is the congestion, the traffic congestion that we see daily,
and also the vehicle deaths that we see every single day,
every single year.
And in order for us as an agency and as an industry
to reach mission zero,
technology such as AVs can help solve some these challenges,
which they can improve congestion, reduce crashes,
reduce travel time.
- And we will have, as engineers, to be able to make sure
that they can operate and mingle with human-driven vehicles.
- What the key findings for this project
is that AVs can help reduce the lane width
from, let's say, 12 feet to eight feet,
which can also increase capacity
by reducing vehicle headway as well.
And also,
vehicles are currently only utilized 20% of the time,
and so FDs, AVs can drive themselves and park themselves.
Then, all of a sudden,
that opens up a wider rate of opportunities for cities
to develop how the businesses will reform,
where they put their parking lots
or even reduce parking lots.
And one of the other key findings
was being able to understand how autonomous vehicles see
and interpret our infrastructure,
such as paper markings and signage,
and make sure that these signages are uniform and consistent
so that these autonomous vehicles
are able to see them correctly.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publication for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.