How smart 5G vehicle communication system will reduce Hong Kong’s fatal road accidents and congestion
- Smart sensors in vehicles can exchange road safety data with other smart vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, traffic lights, lamp posts and buildings
- Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute and its partner, HKT, plan first trial of C-V2X technology on public roads in the city
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Over the past few decades, numerous technological innovations have been introduced to make driving easier and safer, including the use of satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation services, collision avoidance systems and speeding alerts.
These measures have come as the number of vehicles on roads worldwide has continued to rise – up from estimates of about 670 million in 1996 to 1.32 billion by the end of 2016 – fuelled by surging demand in recent years in China and Asia-Pacific’s developing nations, a 2017 Wards Intelligence report found.
This global increase has led to growing traffic problems such as road accidents and congestion, with densely populated Hong Kong – home to about 7.5 million people in an area of 2,755 square km (1,064 square miles) – recording more than 16,000 traffic accidents in 2019, including 113 resulting in fatalities and 1,996 leading to serious injuries, the Transport Department’s latest figures showed.
The same report said that the number of vehicles on the city’s roads is continuing to rise, with 805,206 licensed vehicles recorded last November – up 1.6 per cent compared with the same month in 2019.