One of the co-founders of the specialist eCall consultancy and software company VESOS Solutions has welcomed the Government’s road safety strategy’s emphasis on data use, but says he remains concerned about how data will be made available.
Connected vehicle expert Andy Graham MBE was reacting to the news the government is committing to use increasing levels of connectivity (vehicle to vehicle, and vehicle to infrastructure) to provide further opportunities to support safety in real time, using increasingly advanced connectivity technologies.
The strategy states that: “For example, since 2018, new models of cars and light commercial vehicles have been fitted with eCall (emergency call) which automatically calls the emergency services if the vehicle is involved in a collision of sufficient severity to deploy the airbags, or if someone presses the manual activation (SOS button). These technologies mark a shift toward more responsive, real-time safety interventions that can help improve the outcomes for those involved in collisions.”
“We are very pleased to see the strategy as a whole, and in particular eCall mentioned as a data source for the first time,” Mr Graham commented. “We particularly welcome the emphasis on data use especially for the new Road Safety Investigation Branch. The challenges of real-world access to data still remain, however, and there is little in the strategy about how new sources of data will actually be made available and connecting data from vehicles to practical uses.”
Regarding data, the strategy highlights how the increasing generation and sharing of data from road transport (eg data from the on-board vehicle diagnostics systems) has the potential to deliver new insights to help improve safety. It says that, for example, vehicle data on near misses and potential hotspots could be used to improve road design and adding vehicle data to government and infrastructure data can improve the view of the real world, “not just as it has been designed, but also how it changes day-today”. Furthermore it says “Looking ahead, harnessing this data more systematically could enable predictive safety interventions and smarter infrastructure planning.”
(Picture – VESOS)
