While the development of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) safety applications based
on Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) has been extensively undergoing
standardization for more than a decade, such applications are extremely missing
for Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). Nonexistence of collaborative systems between
VRUs and vehicles was the main reason for this lack of attention. Recent
developments in Wi-Fi Direct and DSRC-enabled smartphones are changing this
perspective. Leveraging the existing V2V platforms, we propose a new framework
using a DSRC-enabled smartphone to extend safety benefits to VRUs. The
interoperability of applications between vehicles and portable DSRC enabled
devices is achieved through the SAE J2735 Personal Safety Message (PSM).
However, considering the fact that VRU movement dynamics, response times, and
crash scenarios are fundamentally different from vehicles, a specific framework
should be designed for VRU safety applications to study their performance. In
this article, we first propose an end-to-end Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P)
framework to provide situational awareness and hazard detection based on the
most common and injury-prone crash scenarios. The details of our VRU safety
module, including target classification and collision detection algorithms, are
explained next. Furthermore, we propose and evaluate a mitigating solution for
congestion and power consumption issues in such systems. Finally, the whole
system is implemented and analyzed for realistic crash scenarios