The Nevada Center for Advanced Mobility (Nevada CAM) and Nexar claim that it the first statewide vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) network in the country. The network will more of a iPhone2Smartpone or phone to phone network because the smartphones are not directly connected to the vehicles themselves and are using the data of the car owners’ smartphones which could be somewhat inaccurate because wirless networks do have latency and delays.
Nexar uses iPhone and Android smartphones as dashcams to warn drivers of real-time impending collisions, pedestrians, bicyclists and other problems. Nevada, especially Las Vegas is home to many accidents including a very high pedestrian death rate.
As of December 25, 2016, the State of Nevada saw 213 vehicle/bicycle/pedestrian fatalities, an approximately 5-percent increase in fatalities from 2015. Per crash reports, approximately half of the pedestrian fatalities and injuries occurred midblock on roadways often at night and not within marked crosswalks. Nevada CAM announced at CES this year that it is working witht the GENIVI alliance to figure out ways to prevent such deaths.
Part of the problem in Vegas is that the blocks are very long and the streets are as wide as freeways with as many as five lanes, making visitors who want to save time attemp to cross in the middle of the street. The last time we AUTO Connected Car News was in Las Vegas, we saw a mother with two small children jaywalk in the middle of the block from an elementary school to a fast food store across six lanes. There were no crossing guards in the area.
Nevada CAM, established in 2016 by the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development, creates advanced mobility opportunities for visitors, residents and industry.
Nevada CAM and Nexar’s collective goal is, by 2020, to generate data covering 250 million miles on a weekly basis. Throughout the partnership Nevada CAM and Nexar will continue to work together to identify additional opportunities with state, city and private vehicle fleets as well as consumers to expand the V2V network.
Nevada CAM and Nexar have outlined key goals of the new partnership: Increase vehicular and pedestrian safety on Nevada roadways: Cars in the network receive real-time warnings of dangerous situations happening in and beyond an individual driver’s line of sight. Over time the Nexar network crowdsources road dangers to all users and enables new Vehicle-to-Infrastructure use cases.
Bring new jobs and business activity to Nevada: To support the statewide V2V network, Nexar expects to add more than a dozen new full-time jobs in Nevada as the network grows.
Introduce a series of “smart state“ systems to support Nevada transportation policy, enforcement and infrastructure management: Nexar’s CityStream platform allows state and local transportation officials access to previously unavailable real-time, anonymous data related to roadway use, traffic patterns and compliance, and transportation infrastructure.
Offer enhanced fleet management capabilities to state and local governments: Nexar’s next-generation telematics allow state and local fleet managers to access live fleet mapping, driver scoring, advanced collision reporting and reconstruction, and hazard detection/automatic vehicle re-routing.
Collaborate on “Smart Transportation“ research projects with Nevada Research Institutes: Utilize the data set generated by Nexar to understand road velocities, traffic blockers, evaluate human braking effectiveness, and generally inform a holistic road management policy (including pedestrian traffic and safety).
Nexar will immediately begin focusing on local hiring, and Nevada CAM-Nexar will collaborate on determining priority areas for deployment of the network in the state. Visitors and residents of Nevada interested in making our roads safer and more efficient are encouraged to download the free Nexar app from Google Play or Apple App stores.