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The Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) has the potential to significantly improve communication reliability, efficiency, and manageability in transportation systems. Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are particularly valuable for sustaining ITS features in dynamic, high-density environments. Integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) into modern transportation systems can further enhance ITS capabilities by providing real-time data and connectivity. Challenges like insufficient spectrum utilization and increased end-to-end latency in single-radio data transmission systems have led to the development of advanced techniques such as dual-radio multi-channel systems. However, these approaches often compromise network performance due to interference. To address these limitations, this paper proposes drone-assisted cooperative routing (DACR), incorporating IoT elements for improved connectivity and data exchange. Performance evaluation, based on comparative analysis with existing state-of-the-art schemes, indicates that the proposed DACR outperforms in packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and control message overhead. DACR demonstrates a 22% and 52% reduction in control message overhead compared to U2RV and CRRA, a 23% improvement in ETE delay over U2RV, a 33% improvement over CRRA, and a 14.5% and 44% increase in PDR, respectively.