Artificial intelligence and safety: How MNOs can leverage automatic crash detection

There is more chatter in the news about artificial intelligence (AI) than most people can even process. Can AI save the world? Will AI make my job obsolete? What is automatic crash detection, really?

It’s true. There are thousands of good use cases for AI. Hospitals are using it to recommend treatment plans for patients. Investment firms are using it to grow their clients retirement portfolios. Heck, we can even use AI to suggest recipes for our Thanksgiving leftovers.

The hype has reached a tipping point. Many business leaders are oversaturated with claims about AI. And for mobile network operators (MNOs), whose industry models are rapidly shifting, that AI “noise” can be overwhelming.

AI for Safety

One big, universal trend in AI right now is the push towards safety.  Even among MNOs, the race is no longer for the “fastest” network.  That’s essentially been decided, and the result is a tie.

The new race is to be the “safest” network.

And the simplest, easiest, most powerful way MNOs can leverage AI to make their customers safer is automatic crash detection.

Automatic Crash Detection and MNOs

In the event of a car crash, mere minutes can make the difference between life and death.

While most people now have smartphones, emergency systems require clear, accurate, verbal communications to deliver help to injured motorists. Expecting drivers in severe distress to perform this task accurately has proven to be unreliable.

Yet today, our smartphones know exactly where and who we are. Moreover, most users already have several apps that monitor their movement and location, and communicate with outside users.

So, in a world where everything is possible in an instant with smartphones, why would we ever allow ourselves to be unprepared in the event of a car crash?

That’s where MNOs and smartphone telematics step in.

Smartphone-Enabled Automatic Crash Detection

Smartphone-enabled crash detection provides peace of mind to wireless customers everywhere.

Using AI and the device’s sensors, like gyroscopes, automatic crash detection senses if a vehicle has experienced a crash. It determines this by measuring deceleration, lateral movement, braking, speed, and more. It can literally know you’ve been in a crash before you do.

But the real upshot is this: thanks to our smartphones, automatic crash detection can connect crash victims to emergency services instantly. As a result, it can automatically provide critical information about the crash, like location, speed, and even medical information about the driver.

For years, automatic crash detection was blocked to the average consumer. For that reason, it required an expensive car or expensive hardware to own. Now, a few lines of code is enough to turn any MNO into a superhero for its customers.

As a result, crucial minutes or hours turn to milliseconds, thanks to MNOs and automatic crash detection.

Which Automatic Crash Detection? Choose Accuracy and Efficiency

Of course, when choosing an automatic crash detection provider, MNOs must keep two critical statistics in mind: accuracy and efficiency.

Accuracy

Accuracy is key to avoid false alarms and keep the value of the offering high. It makes sure the crash detection is only triggered in a real crash. And when it is, it reacts immediately.

The Zendrive platform has successfully detected over 100,000 real-world, live crashes, and has >90% accuracy at over 20 mph. In general, smartphone sensors have been shown to be “directly comparable” to hardware devices in capturing 96% of driving situations.

Efficiency

Efficiency, on the other hand, is a serious business factor. MNOs can only offer automatic crash detection to their users if they can realistically handle the data load. This applies to both the individual user’s data plan and phone battery and the network as a whole.

The Zendrive SDK consumes approximately 1MB per hour of driving. Most noteworthy (on a 2GB data plan) the average user could drive 20 hours per week and only see a 2.5% increase in data usage.

Even more, the entire SDK takes up just 3MB on iOS and 3.6MB on Android. And the average iPhone 7 user sees only 2-4% battery drain after 90 minutes of use.

Conclusion

In short, there seems to be more noise than truth about AI today.

For MNOs, one thing is certain. They can begin to compete on safety right now by using AI to offer automatic crash detection. That’s life-saving peace of mind for users everywhere. With the Zendrive platform, MNOs can offer it without breaking their budgets on battery usage, network data consumption, or cost.

Above all, that’s a smarter and safer world, with better roads already possible today.