While everyone in Michigan rolls their eyes collectively when construction season starts up, we can all admit that we at least like the outcome of the road work.

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However, one project moving forward in the Detroit area is for a VERY specific purpose and sports a large price tag.

Michigan’s very first connected and automated vehicle corridor (road) received a whopping $130 million in funding. The charge was led by Ford and Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners. And now that funding is in place, the state of Michigan has chosen Cavnue to help implement the 25-mile project.

What is an automated vehicle corridor?


These are special roads that are designed to work better for self-driving cars. While most cars on the market currently are not equipped with this technology, as we move forward these vehicles will become more common. So, it's best to work ahead and have the infrastructure in place ahead of all of these vehicles hitting the road.

How many self-driving cars are on the roads?

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Currently, not a lot. In the US, there are more than 1,400 self-driving cars on the roads. Some reports indicate that there could be 10 million AVs this year alone as Google, Tesla, and Uber continuously drive the AV market growth to new heights.

Are self-driving cars actually safer?

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Depends on which ones, but generally yes. Tesla recently released stats showing how their cars are four times safer, with only one fatality per every 320 million miles driven. Human-driven cars have 7.1 fatalities for every 1 billion miles driven, which makes them around 1 in every 140 million miles. So while autonomous cars are still safer, as more self-driving cars hit the road we may see those numbers improve.

So while this may seem like a pointless investment with the low amount of self-driving cars currently in Michigan, down the line East Michigan will be ahead of the curve when it comes to transportation safety and efficiency. In the meantime, it's important to note that CAV corridors also serve connected vehicles (which require a driver actively driving and are very common with today's newer model years) and their advanced driver safety systems (ADAS) like lane keep, automated cruise control, collision avoidance, etc.

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