Motoring and road safety stakeholders are welcoming the National Highways award of pathfinder funding for new initiatives to help manage hazards on motorways and major A roads, including the VESOS solution for harnessing the benefit of data generated by the eCall system.”
VESOS is one of nine new ideas selected by National Highways to receive up to £90,000 funding to develop their concepts and improve safety.
eCall is automatically activated in the event of an incident when the airbags are deployed and can also be manually activated by the driver or passenger by pressing the eCall SOS button. VESOS has developed its platform, TeCall, which delivers faster response and detailed information using the data collated from eCall-enabled vehicles, which includes almost every new car and van sold in the UK since 2018.
“It is good to see National Highways investing in initiatives that exploit the ever-improving opportunities that technology offers, building on the ever-growing volume of data generated through connectivity, to deliver safer, smoother journeys for their customers,” commented RAC Foundation Director Steve Gooding. “The VESOS project to capture data already being generated by the mandatory e-Call technology is a prime example, focusing on a road-safety benefit that’s there for the taking, with the potential to dramatically reduce emergency service response times.”
VESOS is run by four connected vehicle experts, Andy Rooke, Andy Graham, Danny Woolard and Alan Gentle, who formed the first dedicated company for analysing and processing eCall data to create validated incident alerts. The company also consults on implementation and business cases for eCall, as well as strategic advice and data analysis.
“This funding is a significant help to our start-up company as we deliver what we feel is a really important road safety technology,” commented Mr Woolard. “We look forward to working with National Highways to develop our solution which uses intelligent analysis of existing, underused data to make our emergency services better informed when dealing with crashes on the strategic road network, and in turn making drivers and their passengers safer.”
National Highways is working with Connected Places Catapult on the Hazard Protection on Roads Accelerator. VESOS will now receive research funding to design its trial, with possible further funding available to deliver the solution. The competition targeted small or medium enterprises that may not have worked with National Highways before who could have “as yet undiscovered, innovation gems” to share dealing with hazards.
(Picture – VESOS)
