Although the United States experienced a “bike boom” during the pandemic, pedaling on two wheels has grown increasingly dangerous. Cycling deaths in the U.S. surged to almost 900 in 2020, a 44% increase in just 10 years.
Could car companies be cyclists’ salvation? Audi executives believe the answer is yes, and they hosted a bicycle-focused media event that I attended in Oceanside, California, last month to illustrate why.
Anupam Malhotra, Audi’s senior director for connected services, kicked things off by noting the state of emergency declared in August in Carlsbad, Oceanside’s neighbor to the south, where crashes involving bikes have risen 233% since 2019.
“The No. 1 reason these crashes happen,” Malhotra said, “is that the driver says they didn’t see the cyclist.” (That assertion is debatable; building protected bike lanes can keep cyclists safe from even unobservant drivers.)
Malhotra outlined Audi’s proposed solution to America’s bike safety struggles: cars and bikes that communicate through so-called cellular vehicle-to-everything, or C-V2X, which can alert the driver and cyclist if a collision is imminent. Because C-V2X allows a car to “talk” directly with connected objects, it is significantly faster than routing signals through cell towers or satellites.
Thanks to C-V2X adoption, Malhotra said, “by the end of this decade, I think we’ll have taken a very significant leap forward in reducing cyclist deaths.”
During the Audi event, I had a chance to try out the company’s C-V2X technology as a car occupant and as a bike rider. I left convinced that C-V2X could, eventually, reduce crashes in certain scenarios.
But does it offer an immediate fix for the ongoing rise in U.S. bike deaths or an eventual, comprehensive solution for cars crashing into cyclists? The answer is a resounding no on both counts. And it’s dangerous—especially for low-income Americans—to presume otherwise.
You can expect to hear more about C-V2X in the months to come. Carmakers have been working on connected vehicle technology for decades, relying on a section of the 5.9 gigahertz wireless spectrum that has also been coveted by telecom companies (cue a protracted tussle with the Federal Communications Commission). Last year, a federal court decision established that a reduced section of that spectrum will go toward transportation safety, and the FCC is now finalizing its rules.
With the legal battles in the rearview mirror, the transportation industry is revving up for C-V2X deployment. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) hosted a “Vehicle to Everything Communications Summit” at its D.C. headquarters in September, and carmakers like Ford and General Motors are planning to build C-V2X capabilities into their cars.
The vision is that C-V2X-enabled vehicles will be able to communicate 10 times per second with connected objects, including everything from school buses to emergency responders to traffic lights. Such a network could serve as a stepping stone toward general adoption of autonomous vehicles (which itself raises a host of questions, but that’s another story).
All carmakers can access the 5.9 ghz spectrum, but Malhotra said that Audi sees potential competitive advantage in “the experience we deliver to the driver,” interpreting and presenting the deluge of data collected through C-V2X—including from cyclists.
Sitting in the passenger seat of an Audi e-tron in Oceanside, I got a taste of what the company has in mind. A cyclist using a bike equipped with a C-V2X transponder from Spoke, a connected bike startup, helped demonstrate some of the most dangerous scenarios for a person on two wheels. Among them: a driver departs a parallel parking spot while a person on a bike passes to the left, and the dreaded “right hook,” in which a driver turning right moves into the path of a cyclist going straight.
Each time, the Audi communicated with the bicycle, triggering a loud ping along with a bike image that appeared on the e-tron’s dashboard. (For now, Audi is planning to use C-V2X to issue warnings rather than halt the car, but Malhotra said automatic emergency braking could be added later.) Most impressive was the ability to issue an alert even when the biker was visually hidden.
I then hopped on a C-V2X-equipped bike to experience the cyclist’s perspective. An approaching Audi triggered a warning on the device placed on the bike, along with an audible alarm. Reid Sigety, the COO of Spoke, said his company’s transponders will soon be installed inside select bicycles and will also be offered as aftermarket bike lights and cameras costing “several hundred dollars.” A cyclist’s smartphone could eventually act as its own C-V2X device, communicating with other objects and cars that are C-V2X-enabled.
The Audi executives made no secret of why they hosted the Oceanside media event: They want the public to be enthused and impatient about connecting objects to the C-V2X network. Audi’s goal is for 60 million devices—including bikes, smartphones, and stationary infrastructure—to be part of the C-V2X ecosystem by 2030. (To put that figure in perspective, there are around 100 million bikes in the U.S.) Sigety said Spoke will begin outfitting bikes with transponders in Q4 2023, and Malhotra said Audi will begin selling C-V2X-equipped cars in 2025.
That timeline reveals one of the limitations of C-V2X, regardless of how well the technology works. Because C-V2X is still in its infancy, it cannot address current bike safety emergencies in places like Carlsbad. And C-V2X requires significant time to scale. With the average U.S. car now 13 years old, it will be decades (at best) before bike riders can trust that the cars around them are C-V2X-enabled.
And then there is the issue of making cyclists—who pose negligible danger to other street users—ensure their bike or smartphone is C-V2X-equipped (to say nothing of pedestrians, who were not a focus of Audi’s event). In its Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) placed the responsibility for street safety squarely on motor vehicles and their drivers, not on so-called vulnerable road users. “People walking and biking should not be required to carry sensors or signals to stay safe,” according to the report.
Relying on C-V2X as a bike safety strategy also raises red flags about equity. According to Spoke, high-end bicycles costing thousands of dollars will be the first to come equipped with its C-V2X products; buyers of more affordable bike models can pay several hundred dollars for an aftermarket kit. Such costs could be prohibitive for those of limited means who may also be unable to afford C-V2X-connected smartphones. Low-income Americans (who tend to be minorities) are more likely to be killed while biking, but they could be among the last to receive a safety dividend from C-V2X.
Malhotra pushed back against such concerns. “These devices are not absurdly expensive,” he said. “They’re worth it, because they can improve your safety. And as in everything else in consumer products, there will be a range of products at various price points to choose from.” Perhaps, but that still leaves low-income bicyclists spending their own money to protect themselves from danger created by others.
To take a step back and ask a fundamental question: Is connected car technology the best way to enhance safety for cyclists?
Ken McLeod, the policy director at the League of American Bicyclists, does not think so. “There is the possibility that C-V2X will enhance bike safety,” he told me, “but the most critical thing is providing safe places to cycle, which lessens the need of having a device like a transponder.” Groups like NACTO have published design guides to help cities implement road diets and build protected bike lanes, which can significantly reduce bike injuries and fatalities, but such projects still face resistance from car drivers who resent being forced to slow down or surrender scarce street space.
McLeod also worries that a focus on bike safety through C-V2X could lead to victim-blaming. “We already hear questions after a crash like, ‘Was the bicyclist wearing a helmet or high-visibility clothes?’ And now we’ll add, ‘Do they have a working transponder?’” he said. “It doesn’t actually address what could have saved the cyclist: separated infrastructure and slower car speeds.”
McLeod said C-V2X is a lower priority to his organization than building protected bike infrastructure or adding a federal test that assesses cars’ ability to automatically brake to avoid bike collisions, which Europe already has (such tests rely on sensors rather than C-V2X’s wireless signals).
Even though C-V2X is not a bike safety panacea, one could reasonably argue that it’s worthwhile if it prevents even a single fatal bike crash. “The first person who sends us a letter saying ‘You saved my life’ will make it all worth it,” Mark Dahncke, Audi of America’s director of product communications, told The New York Times.
But a focus on C-V2X is not costless. Busy public officials will devote a finite amount of attention toward enhancing bike safety. Time and money directed toward C-V2X might otherwise go toward building protected bike lanes or winning support for slower streets—simple measures that consistently have been shown to save cyclists’ lives.
But Occam’s Razor doesn’t always carry the day among transportation policymakers, especially in a country as technocentric as the U.S. (Example: The Hyperloop’s hollow hype has distracted U.S. policymakers from building high-speed rail.) Last month, the DOT’s research division invited the public to submit ideas about how emergent technology like C-V2X could “protect vulnerable road users,” such as those cycling and walking, at intersections.
At the time I happened to be in the Finnish capital of Helsinki, a city where cycling accounts for about 10% of trips, but which has had no biking deaths at all for four of the last six years. Meeting with city planners, I asked what role technology had played in achieving Helsinki’s impressive safety record.
“Zero,” a Finnish official told me. “We simply slowed down the cars.”
Disclosure: The author’s media trip to Oceanside, California, was paid for by Audi.