DOT Tech News

October 26, 2026  ·  Transportation Technology Briefing

Good morning, DOT tech nerds and professionals. This week, DOT is putting real money behind predictive AI for road safety. One story, but it is a good one.

In this week's DOT Tech News:

• DOT Awards $5.5M to Test AI That Predicts Crashes Before They Happen

DOT Awards $5.5M to Test AI That Predicts Crashes Before They Happen

The U.S. Department of Transportation selected Detroit-based Derq as one of three teams to receive federal funding for Phase 1 of its Intersection Safety Systems initiative, making Derq the only private company in the group.

The $17 million two-phase program tasks participants with building AI systems that don't just log crashes — they anticipate them. Derq's platform fuses real-time camera feeds, sensor data, traffic signal inputs, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications to detect emerging hazards, like a driver running a red light or a pedestrian stepping into traffic, and then acts: issuing warnings, triggering roadside signs, or adjusting signal timing on the spot.

Derq will demonstrate the technology at two proving grounds — Virginia Tech Transportation Institute's Virginia Smart Roads and Texas A&M's RELLIS facility. Public-sector partners include TxDOT, VDOT, the City of Houston, and the Virginia cities of Alexandria and Falls Church. Industry partners include WSP USA, ITSA, and AT&T. Phase 2 carries an additional $11.5 million for real-world intersection deployment.

The company's roots trace to an MIT spinoff in 2016, and it enters this contract having already earned Tier 1 recognition in the DOT's earlier Intersection Safety Challenge. With intersections linked to roughly 18% of U.S. pedestrian fatalities, agencies and vendors watching this program should treat it as a preview of where federal infrastructure procurement is heading.

Why it matters: DOT agencies evaluating next-generation traffic management tools — and vendors building V2X or AI-enabled roadside systems — should track this initiative closely as it defines the technical and procurement benchmarks for proactive intersection safety infrastructure.

Source: U.S. Department of Transportation

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