Are We There Yet?
The emergence of the smartphone has introduced a powerful location-aware device capable of summoning assistance in the case of an emergency as well as communicating contextual alerts and navigation cues. The challenge for phone makers and carmakers and application developers is to carefully tread the fine line between guiding and assisting or distracting the driver.
In a post-IoT world, devices ought to be inherently location-aware. A car should not only sense the proximity of danger, but it should also detect any attention deficits on the part of the driver. These systems ought to be simultaneously built into the car, the smartphone, and the wireless network itself.
The CNN DWD special overlooked a solution provider, Global Mobile Alert, which is working in close cooperation with the U.S. Department of Transportation to see its technology employed as part of the Affiliated Connected Vehicle Test Bed. The GMA technology is available to the more than 70 companies participating in the Test Bed for the purposes of testing and demonstration with appropriate licensing arrangements.
The GMA application will alert active users of smartphones to the proximity of traffic lights, railroad crossings, school zones, and other hazards. The application will also communicate wirelessly the signal phase and timing of any traffic light to the driver during an active wireless call.
While distracted driving accounts for approximately 10% of all highway fatalities in the U.S., intersections are responsible for 33% of those fatalities. Enhanced location awareness, enabled by the smartphone, is the ideal solution to the problem – though the technology is best built into the vehicle as well.
The USDOT Test Bed is only one path to the market for GMA. In connection with the Test, Bed GMA has been reaching out to the 70 participating companies to ensure they have all obtained appropriate credentials and access to GMA’s codebase. Meanwhile, GMA is reaching out directly to wireless carriers and car companies to seek the broadest implementation of its distraction mitigation technology.
Like the stricken families featured in the CNN videos, crash victims and distracted drivers alike, GMA’s chairman and founder, Demetrius Thompson, was himself hit twice by distracted drivers – events that served as the inspiration for the GMA application. The original application, developed before digital maps were widely available, combined the latitude and longitude of key locations with an alert based on the crosswalk chirp associated with assisting blind pedestrians.
The bottom line is clear. We have the technology to quell the crisis of driving while distracted. More details are available from GMA at www.globalmobilealert.com.
Android https://bit.ly/2HV5acG Apple https://apple.co/2JFCgAr
Preferred Alert Mode (During Phone Call Only). List of Regions and countries where available: USA, Canada, Europe
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Source: Roger C. Lanctot