Yelp for drivers: New app uses AI to help prevent traffic accidents

Global Business

Yelp for drivers New app uses AI to help prevent traffic accidents

More than 1.25 million people die each year in traffic accidents globally. And while some progress in road safety legislation has been made, the World Health Organization said the pace of change is too slow.

CCTV America’s Mark Niu reports on a tech startup trying to make a dent in the problem by warning drivers who’s on the road.

 

“Driving today is almost similar to the way our grandparents were driving 50 years ago. Nothing much has changed. Now that we have a phone that has all these sensors We think that we can use this technology to make cars communicate between each other,” Dan Peguine, Head of Growth at Nexar said.

Nexar uses artificial intelligence to create a real-time network of road conditions. If you spot someone driving poorly, you can use touch or voice, and it goes back 20 seconds to capture the full incident. If it senses an accident or braking too hard, it automatically captures what’s happening.

Nexar continually forms a database of high accident locations and dangerous drivers. It reads the license plates around you, building a rating for each driver.

In creating what is like the Yelp for Driving, Nexar is also working on the best way to put out those alerts, whether that be by some type of color flashing or sound notification. The startup realizes there’s a fine line between warning and distracting.

The data in an accident can also be used to write a highly scientific report that could be used in a court case or for insurance companies.

Nexar compares it to being a black box for the car, though the goal in the long run is to create a network that predicts an accident before it occurs.