TomTom-Backed European initiative delivers road safety data ecosystem

The collaboration initiative between TomTom and the Data for Road Safety has resulted in a ready-to-deploy system to warn drivers about dangerous driving conditions. Automakers, Tier 1 suppliers, road traffic authorities, EU member states and location technology providers, partnered on a proof of concept (POC) between June and October 2020. They have now signed a multi-party agreement (MPA) committing to the long-term, reciprocal exchange of data in order to make roads safer.

Using the latest connected car technologies, vehicles can detect and warn occupants about dangerous road conditions – for example, when roads are slippery. These warnings can also be beneficial to other drivers, automated-driving vehicles and road operators.

In the POC, vehicle-generated data, along with infrastructure information, was shared using a decentralized data collaboration architecture. TomTom played a critical role by taking these datasets, processing them, and delivering them back to other vehicles via its live Traffic services, and to road authorities.

Ralf-Peter Schafer, VP Traffic and Travel, TomTom, said: ‘Accidents and other safety-critical events happen fast, making it a real challenge to warn drivers in time. With this safety-focused collaboration, we’ve been able to prove that reciprocal exchange of data can power services that help solve this issue – delivering comprehensive hazard notifications to drivers, faster than ever before.’

TomTom has quickly adopted the available information which will be integrated into its consumer and in-vehicle applications to make sure it benefits as many drivers possible. In addition, the available data will be one of the sources used to power the newly developed Hazard Warnings service which will be in the first road vehicles in 2021. TomTom Hazard Warnings features an industry-first low-latency push service that sends detected hazard alerts to a vehicle in under five seconds.

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