Where does you city rank in likelihood of drivers to experience collisions? Is it near the bottom? How can it be improved?
“We’ve found hard braking to be one of the most highly predictive variables for predicting future crashes.” Progressive Insurance has stated. Coaster ties hard braking events to location for visualization of clusters of sharp deceleration driving event locations.
With the cost of police and/or emergency medical service deployment ranging from several hundred to several thousand per incident, the value of the Coaster app for “Smarter Cities” city infrastructure and departments of transportation lies in the aggregate data of drivers using the app for accident reduction. The data can be helpful in finding clusters of sudden stops within the municipality, indicating potential “hot spots” for further investigation for possible accident reduction. This may lead to actions such as changed traffic signal timing or other corrective actions.
- Drivers with the Coaster app installed are monitored for sudden deceleration
- Sudden deceleration events are logged
- Traffic administrators view aggregate driver data within the municipality
In aggregate participating driver use of the app, a municipality may observe clusters, such as those shown in the traffic engineer view shown below. One approach for acquiring driver data is drivers within the fleet of city vehicles using the app. Another approach is to promote the app to citizens of the city in a “Concerned Driver” type of program. The more drivers and more driving, the better the coverage and, in turn, the better traffics analytics. After installation, the drivers would enter the fleet vehicle ID assigned to the city. The city traffic engineer has access to an equivalent of the above map showing aggregate sudden stop data across the city.
Below is a retroactive map of accidents over a period of time for an area (Source: Texas A&M Transportation Institute by Michael Martin, page 7).
Coaster’s Smart View aims to provide a proactive view, providing insight which leads to removal of some of those crash markers.