A joint pilot study by technology firm Netradyne, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Zoomcar has shown that the company’s Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), Driver-i reduced road accidents by 14% compared to cars without activated voice alerts.
To arrive at the findings, about one lakh trips, 10.6 million miles and five lakh driving hours were tracked from September 2018 to December 2019, Netradyne said in a release. Netradyne did the pilot with 500 Zoomcars, with technical help from IISc’s Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems and Zoomcar.
The study showed that cars with voice-activated alerts compared to those without audio alerts showed a 14% reduction in accidents. Drivers of the cars with the voice alert feature enabled had no prior training, incentives or instructions.
A 27% decline was also seen in six of the overall 20+ driving metrics analysed by Driver-i. The six metrics included speeding, acceleration, hard breaking, hard turning, collision warning and maintaining distance, the release said.
Besides tracking the driving journey and road data, Driver-i also monitored driving behavior through an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system building into the device. Driver-i had four HD inward and outward-looking cameras that record and trigger voice alerts based on driving incidents in real-time.
Netradyne Chief Executive Officer Avneesh Agrawal said the study was an effort to use AI for social good. “India accounts for almost 11% of accident-related deaths, as per the WHO Road Safety 2018 report. Our study has shown that technology intervention can not only reduce fatal driving incidents, but also influence driving behaviour.”
For instance, he said, a large number of accidents in India are caused by driver behaviour, including fatigue, distraction, drowsiness and seat belt non-compliance. “If Driver-i’s inward cameras were also switched on, I believe the drop in accident rates could have been much higher.”