The United States Department of Transportation formally awarded HAAS Alert a Prime Phase II SBIR Contract this month to further improve school bus safety using C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything) alert notifications. Working in coordination with subcontractors and researchers at USDOT Volpe Center, the project will explore additional ways of enabling school buses to deliver real-time safety notifications to approaching vehicles through HAAS Alert’s Safety Cloud® V2X platform, alerting drivers of students boarding or disembarking ahead.

Last year, HAAS Alert worked with the Department of Transportation to show how school buses can deliver V2X safety notifications - called digital alerts - to approaching drivers inside vehicle displays and through the world’s largest navigation applications. The successful Phase I SBIR project demonstrated that Safety Cloud could be equipped to any school bus for less than a dollar a day and automatically deliver advance warning notifications to drivers approaching active bus stops using real-time V2X enhanced with machine learning.

In its Phase II project, HAAS Alert will expand its work into new C-V2X digital alerting use cases for school bus drop-off and pick-up stops, with a particular focus on positively impacting nearby driver behavior. Additional triggering mechanisms will be explored for digital alerts based on various bus operations including stop arm, hazard lights, headlights, and even preventative alerts for drivers approaching pick-up or drop-off areas during periods of time when buses are active.