Anthony Foxx said he hopes to finish the mandate before the president leaves office. DOT car talk mandate in the works

The Obama administration said Monday that it plans to require new cars to be able to communicate with each other, a move that transportation planners called a giant step toward ultimately preventing tens of thousands of crashes every year.

The communication technology, hailed by the Obama administration as the most important car-safety advance in decades, will enable cars to send out location, speed and direction data 10 times a second.


Cars will also be able to communicate with infrastructure like stop signs and traffic lights, and with motorcyclists, bicyclists and even pedestrians with specially equipped smartphones. That data will enable the cars to warn drivers to slow down, brake, turn on their windshield wipers or not to change lanes.

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The technology represents a watershed moment. For decades, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and safety advocates have pushed to make cars safer so passengers would be more likely to survive crashes. Monday’s announcement is a step toward preventing crashes before they happen.

Specifically, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates, “vehicle-to-vehicle” technology could eliminate four out of every five of crashes not involving an impaired driver.

Applying those numbers to 2012 would result in just over 18,000 crashes — far lower than the 34,000 recorded that year.

“The results could be nothing short of revolutionary for roadway safety,” acting NHTSA chief David Friedman said at a press conference Monday, adding: “I believe this V2V technology will amount to an advance in roadway transportation matched only by the development of the Interstate Highway System itself. This is that important of a moment in time.”

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The futuristic technology is still several years away, but Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the administration wanted to propose a final rule “before this administration closes its doors” in January 2017. Foxx said Monday’s announcement would also send an important signal to the industry to get ready for a mandate.

Automakers seem largely on board with the technology, which would add about $100 to $300 to the cost of a car. Most major automakers, including GM, Ford and Toyota, supplied cars for a DOT-backed study of the technology in Ann Arbor, Mich.

“The industry has been waiting,” Scott Belcher, the president of ITS America, told POLITICO. “They’re been waiting for a strong signal. And this is the signal that they need. They’ve been actively engaged in research for the last decade.”

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Belcher and Foxx both said they expected the announcement to spur private-sector innovation, and they anticipated automakers would begin rolling out early versions of the technology before long.

But an automakers’ group cautioned that “many pieces of a large puzzle still need to fit together” before the technology is ready for prime time.

“We need to address security and privacy, along with consumer acceptance, affordability, achieving the critical mass to enable the ‘network effect’ and establishment of the necessary legal and regulatory framework,” the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said.

DOT said its next step is for NHTSA to publish a report in the next few weeks based on a yearlong pilot program it conducted on the technology. “NHTSA will then begin working on a regulatory proposal that would require [the] devices in new vehicles in a future year, consistent with applicable legal requirements, Executive Orders, and guidance,” the department said.

That “future year” could be years away and the full benefits of vehicle-to-vehicle technology even further in the future. Once a mandate is in place, there will be still millions of cars on the road without the technology. Belcher predicted a large aftermarket push to get the technology into smartphones or dashboard devices, suggesting it could be embedded in EZPasses or similar devices.

Karl Brauer, a senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book, predicted a bumpy introduction.

“The full transition from our current vehicle fleet to a connected fleet will take at least 10 years, and like any new technology the early stages of the transition will be fraught with glitches,” he said in a statement. “When ABS, traction control and airbag technologies were first introduced to production cars they all had problems that couldn’t be discovered in a test lab. These issues required real-world use to understand and address. Given the level of advanced technology involved in car-to-car communications, and the degree to which this technology will play a role in vehicle control, this transition will present many challenges along the way.”

Among those hurdles: protecting the data and blocking outsiders from sending malicious instructions to vehicles. That would require some type of security, and plans for that remain unfinished, a Government Accountability Office report found late last year.

What’s more, the slice of electromagnetic spectrum used by car-to-car communications overlaps with a chunk of spectrum that the Federal Communications Commission is considering allowing for unlicensed uses like WiFi, something Congress has asked the FCC to do. That creates uncertainty for auto manufacturers as to how much spectrum they’ll have at their disposal.

“A considerable amount of work remains to examine the compatibility between unlicensed devices and these incumbent uses [like car-to-car communications],” FCC chief engineer Julius Knapp testified at a House hearing on the issue in November.

The Global Automakers, a separate auto industry group, raised similar concerns in a statement.

“We’re concerned that opening up the 5.9 GHz frequency band to other wireless users could cause harmful interference and affect the integrity of the V2V safety communications,” said Michael Stanton, the group’s president. “Communication delays of even thousandths of a single second matter when dealing with auto and highway safety. That’s why we are working with the Wi-Fi industry to find out if this spectrum can safely be shared.”

Privacy questions include whether the data collected by the devices could be available to law enforcement. The influx of gadgets in modern cars already has some lawmakers wondering what kind of driver data are collected through technology like navigation systems. Car-to-car communication may not pose the exact same kind of privacy problems, but auto companies told the GAO that “the potential perception of a lack of privacy is a challenge.”

In May, Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) raised concerns about hackers using connected vehicle technology to cause accidents. NHTSA said it had started a new office to deal with any potential threats.

In a statement to POLITICO on Monday, Rockefeller praised DOT for moving toward the new technology.

“Any technology that can save thousands of lives each year should be pursued vigorously,” he said. “I understand that there is a lot of work to do before this technology could be ready for full-scale deployment – including the development of strong security and privacy measures – but the life-saving potential is high, and I applaud the Department for taking this step.”

Rockefeller’s concerns about privacy were echoed by Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), the co-chairs of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus.

“Americans must have confidence that their privacy and personal data is protected under any mandatory connected vehicle program,” the duo said in a statement. “Vehicle-to-vehicle communications will generate enormous amounts of data about people’s driving and personal movements, and we must ensure that this private information can be safeguarded.”

Some members of the transportation community seemed unable to contain their glee at Monday’s announcement.

“Today’s announcement by NHTSA officials is a positive step for our ultimate goal of delivering the safest and most efficient transportation system imaginable,” Michigan Department of Transportation Director Kirk Steudle said. “This is a significant announcement for the future of safe mobility and a day that will lead to great reductions in traffic fatalities. USDOT should be commended for its leadership and vision.”

The move comes close to fulfilling a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation from last summer that the federal government require all new cars to come equipped with connected vehicle technology. “This technology more than anything else holds the promise to save lives and prevent injuries,” NTSB Chairwoman Debbie Hersman said at the time.

Alex Byers contributed to this story.