By Gretchen Stoeltje and Greg Winfree
If you’ve been designing or building roads in recent years, you are probably familiar with the anticipated safety benefits of connected vehicles and the technology that will be required to make them work.
You probably know that in order for connected vehicles to communicate with one another and with nearby infrastructure, they need space in the radio spectrum for their signals to travel, and that 20 years ago, the Federal Communications Commission allocated 75 megahertz of the 5.9-gigahertz band for this purpose.
What you may not know is that this allocation is being reconsidered. This fall, as early as October, the FCC will take up a proposed rule change that would reallocate the lower 45 MHz of the 5.9-GHz spectrum for use by unlicensed Wi-Fi users, particularly the cable industry.[1]
When the FCC reserved the entire 75 MHz of that band for transportation safety uses, it was to be used by licensed users of dedicated short-range communications.
Dedicated short-range communications is an intelligent transportation systems technology that enables vehicle-related communications and is expected to support safety-based messaging between vehicles and other vehicles, and between vehicles and infrastructure.[2] The full range of vehicles and other vehicles, vehicles and infrastructure, and vehicle communications to other elements is collectively referred to as V2X.
Licensed users of the 5.9-GHz spectrum are members of the automotive industry who are developing V2X-instrumented vehicles in reliance on the unimpeded, allocated area of the spectrum in question. However, vehicles equipped to talk to infrastructure have nothing to talk to if the infrastructure is not also equipped.
Accordingly, several state departments of transportation have undertaken pilot programs and demonstration sites to instrument roads with roadside units and other technologies that would allow the vehicle-and-infrastructure communication that can best maximize the safety potential of a fully connected future.[3]
Despite the fact that dedicated short-range communications has been implemented on a pilot basis across much of the country, the FCC, pointing to what it characterizes as the slow evolution of V2X technologies, now proposes to repurpose the lower 45 MHz of the band for unlicensed operations like Wi-Fi.[4] Other emerging technologies, such as cellular-V2X, have shown promise for supporting safety messaging but are still in development.[5]
What does this mean? According to the International Transportation Society of America and others, this could dramatically change the course of vehicle safety, for a number of reasons.
First, as Intelligent Transportation Society of America notes in its February 2020 white paper,[6] U.S. Department of Transportation research shows that currently there is not sufficient evidence to show that if unlicensed users were operating in the lower 45 MHz of the 5.9-GHz band, V2X technologies could function without interference.
The FCC itself had committed to three testing phases to determine whether unlicensed use of the lower 45-MHz band of the 5.9-GHz spectrum would interfere with licensed safety uses of the upper 30 MHz. However, the FCC has completed only the first phase of that testing, and its published results were inconclusive.[7]
Second, V2X technologies could not work together in those remaining 30 MHz. These technologies are designed to function in the full 75 MHz of the dedicated range and cannot compress to function in less.
What this could mean in practical terms is that safety applications like crash avoidance, vehicle-to-pedestrian applications and coordinated intersection protocols could fail; automated truck platooning could end; road weather warnings and other system efficiencies could be compromised or sabotaged; or cool-factor applications in the transportation ecosystem like edge computing, artificial intelligence and machine-to-machine communications could be stalled.[8]
And what would we gain with this rule change? Enhanced entertainment features — think uninterrupted movie streaming into your vehicle — and a potential $60 billion to $106 billion annual bump to the U.S. gross domestic product could result, according to a 2018 RAND Corp. study.[9]
That sounds impressive, but compare it to the $800 billion in annual losses that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates the U.S. suffers from car crashes, measured in medical costs and lost productivity,[10] and the boost hardly seems worth it, especially if V2X technology was given the chance to fulfill its projected capability of reducing car crashes by 80%.[11]
In an effort to outpace the FCC’s rulemaking process, the automotive industry is acting quickly. Automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp. and Lexus, announced plans to bring V2X-equipped cars to market, though Toyota has since changed course due to the uncertainty created by the FCC’s pending decision,[12] and a coalition of automakers recently pledged to deploy at least 5 million V2X radios on vehicles and roadway infrastructure within the next five years.[13]
This urgency could aid in spurring public demand for the technology, and could pressure the FCC to reverse course or suffer the consequences of denying the public a coveted automotive technology.
If car manufacturers succeed in moving the spectrum battle from the policy arena to the marketplace, it may be up to U.S. car buyers to determine our country’s collective level of interest in roadway safety.
Gretchen Stoeltje is an assistant research assistant and Greg Winfree is the agency director at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
This article was originally published in Law360, October 15, 2020.
[1] John Eggerton, “Hill Chill with FCC 5.9 GHz Review,” Next TV, June 20, 2019, https://www.nexttv.com/news/hill-chill-with-fcc-5-9-ghz-review.
[2] Greg Winfree, “5.9 GHz Spectrum Is Critical for Safe Roads and Should Be Protected,” Technology Today.com, January 20, 2020, https://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/opinion/winfree-dsrc-is-critical-for-safe-roads-and-must-be-protected-at-all-costs.html.
[3] U.S. Department of Transportation Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, “CV Pilots Take Advantage of Multiple Communication Media,” https://www.its.dot.gov/pilots/cvp_media.htm.
[4] Federal Communications Commission, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, In the Matter of Use of the 5.850-5.925 GHz Band, ET Docket No. 19-138, November 21, 2019, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-360940A1.pdf.
[5] Greg Winfree and Larry Head, “Safer Roads or Faster Movie Downloads? Let’s Choose Wisely,” Automotive Technology, November 4, 2019, https://www.autonews.com/commentary/safer-roads-or-faster-movie-downloads-lets-choose-wisely.
[6] ITS America, 5.9 GHZ Band: Myths vs Facts, February 2020, https://itsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/V2X-Myth-Vs-Fact-Sheet.pdf.
[7] Federal Communications Commission, Public Notice, ET Docket No. 13-49, Pages 10-11, 2016. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-16-68A1.pdf; Federal Communications Commission, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, In the Matter of Use of the 5.850-5.925 GHz Band, ET Docket No. 19-138, November 21, 2019, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-360940A1.pdf.
[8] ITS America, 5.9 GHZ Band: Myths vs Facts, February 2020, https://itsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/V2X-Myth-Vs-Fact-Sheet.pdf.
[9] Diana Gehlhaus, Nicholas Martin, Marjory S. Blumenthal, Philip Armour, and Jesse Lastunen, “The Potential Economic Value of Unlicensed Spectrum in the 5.9 GHz Frequency Band: Insights for Future Spectrum Allocation Policy,” RAND Corporation, 2018, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2720.html.
[10] Greg Winfree and Larry Head, “Safer Roads or Faster Movie Downloads? Let’s Choose Wisely,” Automotive Technology, November, 4, 2019, https://www.autonews.com/commentary/safer-roads-or-faster-movie-downloads-lets-choose-wisely.
[11] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “Press Release: Proposed Rule Would Mandate Vehicle‐to‐Vehicle (V2V) Communication on Light Vehicles,” December 13, 2016, https://one.nhtsa.gov/About-NHTSA/Press-Releases/ci.nhtsa_v2v_proposed_rule_12132016.print.
[12] Greg Winfree, “5.9 GHz Spectrum Is Critical for Safe Roads and Should Be Protected,” Technology Today.com, January 20, 2020, https://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/opinion/winfree-dsrc-is-critical-for-safe-roads-and-must-be-protected-at-all-costs.html.
[13] Alliance for Automotive Innovation, “Auto Industry Unites Behind Safety Technology by Committing at least 5Million V2X Radios and Devices by the End of 2025,” April 23, 2020, https://www.autosinnovate.org/press-release/auto-industry-unites-behind-safety-technology-by-committing-at-least-5-million-v2x-radios-and-devices-by-the-end-of-2025/.