Dave Gross has been President and CEO of Collision Control Communications for the past 18 years, and has been involved in different facets of radio and broadcast engineering for over 50 years. He holds multiple U.S. and international patents in the fields of transit signal priority systems, traffic signal preemption systems, vehicle to vehicle (V2V) collision avoidance systems, and the utilization of GPS and FM radio to find more reliable methods to control traffic signals for public transit and emergency vehicles.
With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Dave has been recognized both nationally and internationally as one of the foremost authorities on Traffic Signal Preemption (for emergency vehicles) and Transit Signal Prioritization (for public transit). He presents technical sessions annually at the National IMSA (International Municipal Signal Association)(www.imsasafety.org) conference, where the “tech session” attendees acquire “TARP” points that count toward their IMSA certification and continuing education requirements. He also presents regular technical sessions regarding preemption to other organizations including the ITS (Intelligent Transportation Society) North American Conference, ITS World Congress, IERC (Indiana Emergency Responders Conference), and FRI (Fire Rescue International), as well as state IMSA conferences. These technical sessions are non-biased to any single company, device, system or platform type, but instead give an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of the four different system platforms which are commercially available (acoustic, optical, radio based compass, and GPS preemption system platforms). Dave’s technical sessions include history, features, and the latest technology break-throughs in the industry that allow traffic signal managers and technicians to better implement these technologies, and know which platforms are most likely to be useful in their city.
In 1999, Dave’s first patent (US Pat No 6,325,903) successfully overcame a patent challenge from a huge corporation (Daimler Chrysler) who had filed a similar patent on collision avoidance six months prior (but, unlike Dave’s, did not include traffic signal preemption). When the US Patent Office awarded Dave his first patent in 2001, this paved the way for the formation of Collision Control Communications, Inc. later that same year. Since then, he has added several US and foreign patents to CCC’s portfolio.