Other countries are more advanced in ITS technology than the United States due, in part, to their traffic congestion. The traffic congestion in Europe, and especially Japan, is considerably worse than in this country. However, the United States should follow the rest of the world's example and implement a structured system of traffic management before its problems get worse. The systems in other countries were all formed as joint operations between government, industry, and research institutions. Without this collaborative effort, projects of this magnitude would have had little chance of success.

The reason for combining the operations of government, industry, and research institutions was to get a global perspective on current problems and solutions. In this way, resources could be put to use on citywide or country operational systems. This scale of organization has not been adopted in the United States. In addition to traffic flow and route navigation information, developments from other countries include driving aides such as collision avoidance and driving condition monitors. Human factors guidelines can be drawn by the study of these programs, their individual systems, and their direct research findings.

Previous

Next