Connected Car
In France, the infrastructure managed by national railway operator SNCF includes more than 15,400 level crossings where road meets rail. Over the last 10 years, the number of collisions between cars and trains at level crossings has hovered between 100 and 140 each year – causing between 25 and 40 fatalities. Smart crossingsThe SNCF’s Innovation and Research Department believes this field of technological development provides new solutions for the safety of level crossings, transforming them into ‘smart’ crossings by communication with connected vehicles. SNCF equipped an automatic light system (ALS) level crossing with G5 and GPS antennas, plus control and transmission modules. On the strength of its feedback, SNCF submitted the use cases for level crossings to standards organisation ETSI in order to achieve standardisation at European level.