28-4-1-1
A VANET-based Emergency Vehicle Warning System
Andreas Buchenscheit, Florian Schaub, Frank Kargl, and Michael Weber Institute of Media Informatics, Ulm University, Germany
firstname.lastname@uni-ulm.de
Abstract— One often cited use case for vehicular networks are applications that relate to emergency vehicles. In addition to the traditional siren, they could use radio communication to warn other vehicles or to preempt traffic lights. Such an application can reduce accident risks during emergency response trips and also help save valuable time. We outline a comprehensive design of such an emergency vehicle warning system that makes full use of inter-vehicle communication, but also encompasses roadside infrastructure like traffic lights. In our system, other vehicles are not simply warned of an approaching emergency vehicle; they also receive detailed route information. Based on this information, timely and appropriate reaction of other drivers is possible. A prototype of our system has been tested in a traffic environment including emergency vehicles and traffic lights. To identify requirements and evaluate our system, we also conducted a detailed analysis of videos from emergency response trips and an expert survey among members of a local emergency response organization.
I. I NTRODUCTION Every driver knows the situation: you hear a siren of an emergency vehicle and struggle what to do next. It is often hard to locate the emergency vehicle, to decide where it is driving to, and what would be the best maneuver to give way. Therefore, drivers often react too late or in a wrong way, which can lead to severe accidents with exactly those vehicles that should bring help and relieve. During emergency response trips, emergency vehicles have a much higher risk of being involved in accidents than other cars. With emergency vehicles, we mean all kinds of vehicles that are authorized to use emergency signaling equipment (e.g., blue lights and sirens) to be...