This paper provides the status of the Vehicle Safety Communications-Applications (VSC-A) research project, which was designed to determine if dedicated short range communications (DSRC) paired with accurate vehicle positioning can improve upon autonomous vehicle-based safety systems or enable new communication-based safety applications. This three-year project is a collaborative effort between government and industry to develop the underlying pre-competitive elements needed to enable the deployment of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication-based crash avoidance applications. The effort includes the development of core software and hardware modules and prototype applications. These use DSRC in conjunction with enhancements to vehicle positioning systems to demonstrate crash avoidance capabilities, which are interoperable between different vehicle manufacturers. To support the development of interoperable systems, the partners have participated in standards and security protocol development activities. The core modules and prototype applications are implemented on a five-vehicle testbed fleet, which will be used to conduct objective tests that are then used to validate minimum performance specifications established as part of this project. These tests will in turn support a safety benefits estimation process to determine the potential for preventing or mitigating crashes and associated fatalities, injuries, and property damage.