Smarter. Safer. Greener. How 5G cellular-vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology is transforming transportation

Why Smarter is Also Safer

5G helps connect vehicles to everything around them, so road users and infrastructure can coordinate their actions to make travel safer. The wireless technology called cellular-vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) that allows vehicles to communicate with other vehicles, roadside infrastructure, and pedestrians has the potential to make transportation safer for everyone involved. 

Drivers and vehicles given time to prepare for situations can ultimately reduce the number of crashes, injuries, and fatalities on roadways. With C-V2X connectivity, drivers can:

• turn left more safely,
• respond to a breaking vehicle ahead,
• avoid vulnerable road users, or
• receive warnings about emergency vehicles on route to an incident.

Enhancing safety can improve mobility. Crashes and other non-recurring incidents account for approximately half of all traffic congestion in many parts of the world. Using advanced connectivity, we can expect to:

• Avoid up to 10,000 fatalities per year
• Lower the number of injuries by 800,000 each year
• Reduce the damaged vehicle count by as much as 2.8 million every year
• Achieve cost savings of $12.6 billion per year due to the reduction in damaged vehicles
• Significantly improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, who are most vulnerable on the road. 

Deploying 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands can deliver the capacity, speed and performance across networks to support connected transportation.

C-V2X promotes transportation equity

Sharing information via C-V2X has the potential to make driving safer in low income and minority communities in urban areas, where collisions occur at much higher rates. (Between 2009 and 2018, pedestrian deaths rose 69 percent in urban areas, and cycling deaths increased by 48 percent.)

By connecting people and vehicles with infrastructure and reporting, the 5G C-V2X smarter-is-safer model can:

• Increase safety in rural areas where the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled is two times higher than in urban areas.
• Enable emergency services to improve their response times.
• Potentially eliminate or mitigate the severity of up to 80 percent of non-impaired crashes.
  

Smart traffic management reduces vehicle emissions 

Cellular and transportation networks, in partnership, are putting us on the road to a greener future. C-V2X communications enable more efficient traffic-flow management: vehicles traveling in smooth traffic patterns spend less time on the road which cuts pollution from vehicle emissions. Network communications work to support energy-saving pre-trip route and transportation mode planning. See how the 5G roadmap is making smart transportation cleaner and greener.