Impacts of Autonomous Truck-Mounted Attenuator (ATMA) on INDOT Work Zone Safety, Mobility, and Worker Productivity
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Summary
This study evaluates the impacts of the Autonomous Truck-Mounted Attenuator (ATMA) system on work zone safety, traffic mobility, and worker productivity for the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT). Motivated by high rates of worker fatalities and injuries in road maintenance zones, particularly among Truck-Mounted Attenuator (TMA) drivers, the research investigates whether autonomous technology can safely replace human drivers in the follower vehicle. The ATMA system utilizes vehicle-to-vehicle communication to allow a human-driven leader truck to guide an autonomous follower truck, thereby removing the driver from the crash-prone TMA vehicle. The methodology combined a review of state-of-practice deployments through interviews with project managers from four state DOTs, closed-road technical testing, and open-road field evaluations. The ATMA system was deployed across five mobile work zone operations: sweeping, trash pickup, crack sealing, raised pavement marker (RPM) inspection, and underdrain inspection. Tests were conducted on various roadway types, including interstate highways and local roads, under both day and night conditions. Additionally, microscopic traffic simulations were performed to assess mobility impacts, and surveys were administered to INDOT workers to gauge their perceptions of safety and productivity. A cost-benefit analysis was also conducted to determine economic feasibility. The results indicate that the ATMA system performed successfully in sweeping, trash pickup, RPM inspection, and underdrain inspection, maintaining a "normal operation" status 96.62% of the time. However, the system failed to support crack sealing operations because it cannot operate at speeds below 4 mph, whereas crack sealing requires speeds around 1 mph. Technical limitations included occasional disengagement due to GPS signal loss in constrained environments, such as under overpasses, and instances where the system stopped in intersections, potentially violating traffic rules. Worker surveys revealed that employees felt comfortable operating the system after training and believed it improved safety and productivity. Trust in the technology increased with longer exposure, while age did not significantly affect evaluations. Traffic simulations showed that higher traffic volumes and slower ATMA speeds resulted in greater traffic delays. The study concludes that while the ATMA system offers significant safety benefits by removing drivers from hazardous positions, its current economic feasibility is limited. The cost-benefit ratio is less than 1.0 due to high procurement and maintenance costs associated with the nascent technology and small market size. The authors recommend implementing the ATMA for operations requiring specific moving speeds, providing comprehensive training, and exercising caution in GPS-denied areas. They suggest that as technology matures and market size increases, costs will likely decrease, improving the system's long-term viability.
Key finding
The ATMA system demonstrated high operational reliability and worker acceptance for most mobile work zone tasks, but its current high cost results in a benefit-cost ratio below 1.0.
Methodology
mixed_methods
Sample size: 14
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | rosap | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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