The NYCDOT leads the New York City Pilot, which aims to improve the safety of travelers and pedestrians in the city through the deployment of V2V and V2I connected vehicle technologies. This objective directly aligns with the city’s Vision Zero initiative, which seeks to reduce crashes and pedestrian fatalities and increase the safety of travelers in all modes of transportation. Approximately 310 intersections in Midtown Manhattan and central Brooklyn will be instrumented with roadside devices to communicate with up to 8,500 vehicles (taxis, buses, commercial fleet delivery trucks, and city-owned vehicles) equipped with after-market safety devices. These devices will monitor communications with other connected vehicles and infrastructure and provide alerts to vehicle. In addition, NYCDOT will deploy approximately 8 roadside devices along the higher-speed FDR Drive to address challenges such as short-radius curves, a weight limit and a minimum bridge clearance and 36 roadside devices at other strategic locations throughout the City to support system management functions.

NYCDOT first approached the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), United Parcel Service (UPS), and others to propose a large-scale deployment of connected vehicles. The meetings included technical, operations, and legal personnel to address a wide range of issues, including device installation, maintenance requirements, operating hours, operator selection, geographic coverage areas, stakeholder responsibilities, system operation, driver interface, and data collection activities. A concern of all stakeholders was that any data generated could, if collected, be used for driver evaluation or that such data could be subpoenaed for criminal and/or civil suits or the subject of a freedom of information act (FOIA) request for any and all records available that could then be merged with other records (e.g. police accident reports) and used in legal proceedings, disciplinary proceedings, or insurance negotiations. However, the City assured their stakeholders that they would be implementing a number of measures to protect the privacy of the participants and to make sure that the data collected cannot be disaggregated and analyzed or merged with other data (e.g. police accident records) to determine the exact actions and location history of any specific operator or vehicle.