If there¡¯s one thing we¡¯re used to on Indian roads, it¡¯s dealing with accidents on a regular basis. Between our bad roads, bad signals, and even worse traffic enforcement, 1.5 lakh people die in over 4 lakh accidents a year, the highest number of annual road fatalities anywhere in the world.?
But what if we could get some added assistance in the driver¡¯s seat. Self-driving cars attempt to get so good at keeping their occupants safe they can one day take the wheel out of our hands entirely. But until that day arrives, there may be a halfway solution we can adopt right now.
Mobileye
That¡¯s where local car rental service Revv comes in. In a recent announcement, the company has tied up with Intel subsidiary Mobileye to help make our roads just a little bit safer. The company is adopting Mobileye¡¯s Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in its fleet, to help keep people that rent their cars safe, and keep their eyes on the road.
According to the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, an estimated 84 percent of 4 lakh accidents that occur in India every year are the driver¡¯s fault. They get momentarily distracted by using a mobile phone, exhaustion, or make unintentional or sudden lane changes etc. Therefore, Mobileye attempts to stop these incidents from occurring with driver warnings, as well as extra sensory data. Using this, Mobileye believes it can prevent over 3 lakh accidents a year, saving more than 1 lakh lives in the process.
With ADAS, Revv can alerts its drivers prior to a potential accident, hopefully giving them time to react and mitigate or avoid damage and injury. ADAS can warn the driver they¡¯re about to collide with the vehicle ahead, even monitoring the stopping space between the two cars and warning when the gap is too small. In daylight, it can warn of possible imminent collisions with pedestrians or cyclists. Additionally, the system is capable of alerting the driver when they make an unsignaled lane change (which they may not have realised) and even recognising speed limit signs to notify the driver if they¡¯re going too fast.
Revv says it tested the ADAS with 30 vehicles over three months, driven over 4,00,000 km. In that time, it says it witnessed a 74 percent decrease in accident rates, despite regular customers still being the drivers. Thanks to the pilot¡¯s success, the company is now rolling out the system to all of its 800 vehicles in the country
¡°India has only 1 percent of the world¡¯s vehicles, but accounts for 10 percent of the world¡¯s road fatalities,¡± the Revv co-founders said in a statement to media. ¡°Given this, we felt that any step to increase the safety of our customers is a step worth taking.¡±