Hong Kong To Use 5G Smart Communication Tech To Reduce Road Crashes

HONG KONG - A global increase in traffic congestion and road accidents has led Hong Kong to launch the world's first trial of 5G smart car communication technology for safer roads.

According to the Hong Kong Transport Department, the increasing demand in their densely populated area caused more than 16 000 traffic accidents in 2019. The department also recorded an increase of 1.6% of vehicles on the city’s roads, with the latest figure showing 805 206 licensed vehicles in November 2020.

A leading research and development institute in Hong Kong, ASTRI, has been developing a solution to make the city more intelligent through Project 5G C-V2X.

The project involves real-time communication between the cars driving on the road, infrastructure, traffic lights, and other devices through smart sensors used to interact and exchange the data.

“The technology is called cellular vehicle-to-everything, and C-V2X technology is where vehicles can communicate with almost anything surrounding them,” Dr. Justin Chuang, ASTRI’s vice-president of communications technologies, told South China Morning Post (SCMP).

He added that to make the project work, ASTRI would need to closely work with the transport department on the road map to smart mobility, which includes autonomous driving, and to collect data from the trial run for optimizing the experience.

“The C-V2X is not only a car by itself, but it is also a whole infrastructure of networks connecting everything,” said Henry Wong, HKT’s head of strategic wireless technology.

“We will store a lot of sensors on the road to collect the information about the road conditions and the information will be exchanged between the vehicles and alert the driver.

“So that makes the road become intelligent,” he said.

African News Agency (ANA)