TU-TESL

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The industry has been debating for years about what kind of communication the automakers might use in the future to inform drivers of potential dangers on the road. While the auto industry and the government have been debating whether DSRC or cellular communications can better send information, waycare, an Israeli start-up, is focusing on the information itself. (image source: waycare) waycare was established in 2016. Its initial pilot project is to help the transportation department analyze real-time and near real-time traffic information, so as to help drivers avoid collision accidents. In partnership with the Las Vegas transportation center, the company reduced major accidents on some sections of Interstate 15 by 17%. Currently, the company is expanding its business and working with the Florida Department of transportation's central Ohio transportation authority, which mixes Columbus with Florida's Department of transportation, on similar projects. In addition, waycare announced that it has raised $7.5 million in round a financing and plans to expand its business to the remaining five to 10 states of the United States by the end of 2020. And from next year, cities in Israel and Europe plan to use waycare's software. In the past, it has long been thought that cars can reduce the number of deaths on the American highway by about 40 thousand a year. But at the EcoMotion conference held in Tel Aviv in June this year, Waycare provided evidence that there were many measures to reduce the number of deaths in traffic accidents before the realization of autopilot. Waycare uses a cloud based platform to collect real-time data from partners and fleets, and runs deep learning algorithms on such information to identify existing problems and predict the most likely locations for problems and accidents. Such inferences come from splicing information, including information such as hard braking and evasion detected on a single vehicle, as well as more extensive traffic deceleration information recognized in the video, as well as other background information such as weather conditions and nearby sports events. Law enforcement agencies and traffic management departments can use waycare's platform to deal with immediate problems. Tina Quigley, manager of the South Nevada Regional Transportation Commission, said that when using the platform, the commission can find a collision 12 minutes in advance, and decide where to deploy resources to prevent further collisions. Waycare technology is not only a way to spread time sensitive information of traffic conditions and hazards, but also an alternative way to reduce the need to replace embedded aging sensors on the road. In the future, the technology will also eliminate the infrastructure investment needed to transmit secure information over DSRC or cellular networks. Drivers can also benefit directly from waycare's information and inference. Waycare relies on waze to obtain some information, and also feeds back real-time information to application users. For the time being, however, the company's main focus is to work with public transport agencies to help reduce collision accidents and prepare for future management of networked and self driving cars.