Accurate accident reconstruction in VANET

Abstract

We propose a forensic VANET application to aid an accurate accident reconstruction. Our application provides a new source of objective real-time data impossible to collect using existing methods. By leveraging inter-vehicle communications, we compile digital evidence describing events before, during, and after an accident in its entirety. In addition to sensors data and major components' status, we provide relative positions of all vehicles involved in an accident. This data is corroborated by observations provided by witness vehicles to rectify inconsistencies. Our application utilizes the mandatory form of VANET communication (beacons), making it non-obtrusive in terms of resource and bandwidth consumption. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.