Startup drivebuddyAI Aims To Curb Road Accidents To The Core

Globally, road traffic crashes rank as the 9th leading cause of death and also account for around 2.2 percent of all deaths globally. Addressing this problem, startup drivebuddyAI has come up with a significant solution.

Talking to Express Computer’s Gairika Mitra, Nisarg Pandya- Founder & CEO, drivebuddyAI, spills the beans…

At a time when road accidents have become a pretty common affair, how is drivebuddyAI coming to the rescue?

drivebuddyAI is providing active safety which means that our technology alerts the driver before the accident can take place using predictive artificial intelligence. DRISHTI (Driver Safety Harness with Telematics & Intelligence) has road and driver-facing cameras which lookout for front collision and driver distraction, in any such case if the accident probability is high the device generates sound alerts to warn the driver to control the vehicle.

What is the latest form of technology being adopted at drivebuddyAI, and how accurate are the results?

drivebuddyAI is purely based on artificial intelligence and Computer Vision technologies to solve the problem of driver distraction which is the reason for 84% of total accidents happening in the world.  The accident predictions are being generated by this technology. Results are so far good, accuracy is good on highways during clear skies. Since the AI is as good as the training it goes under, it will take some time to become adaptable across the geography.

With our retro-fit AI-IoT Based Driver Monitoring and Assistance System, it brings in new future of smart connectivity and mobility which provides insights in the field of commercial logistics, transport services, road engineering and insurance sector. With on-board forward collision assistance and drive distraction / driver drowsiness warning, drivers could be safer and more reliable while increasing efficiency. Our cloud platform consists of intelligent video analytics, driver evaluation and driver coaching modules which helps driver improve driving skills while reducing accidents. All these features bundled as a packaged makes our solution one of its kind. These features could be utilised by private fleets and government fleet to monitor, assist and train drivers to enhance vehicle and driver safety. Our video analytics consists of providing road monitoring reports to city municipals that could be utilised to optimise congestion at traffic junction and identify accident prone zones by mapping technique.

What are the current pilot projects that drivebuddyAI is catering to at present? Could you give us some numbers?

Majorly our devices go in commercial vehicles. Various fleet companies are utilizing our devices to track their drivers and incentivise their driving. Fleets have found it really useful to prevent proxy driving. But more than that the fleet drivers have accepted the device because at various instances the drivers accepted that they were falling asleep and the device prevented an accident saving their lives. 

We are presently working with UPSTRC ( Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation)  of State Government of Uttar Pradesh to ensure safer journey’s on Yamuna Express Way.  We are soon going to start one of the largest pilot projects with a leading motor insurance company in India.  Also, we have done pilot with Adobe in past. 

How is drivebuddyAI looking forward to scale in the near future?

We are focusing on better adoption by the fleet companies. We are reiterating our business model and go to market strategy to have better competitive advantage than any other player in the market.

We are in talks with many other states transport departments for installing our devices in the buses. We are confident that with the support from Government of India and various  state governments, we will be able to reduce the road causalities in big numbers.

The Government has planned on similar initiatives in order to avoid road crashes. What is the different offering by drivebuddyAI?

Most of the initiatives are not AI-enabled. They are mostly being used for recording and live streaming the video feed but we are creating an intervention with the driver to ensure that he feels safe and doesn’t get into an accident. As we said, we are providing active safety, which not many companies in India are doing yet.

Could you share some stats on how has drivebuddyAI been helping in curbing road crashes?

Our analytics DOPE (Driver Observation & Profiling Interface) enables more visibility on the driver behaviour and patters which causes the accidents. We then intervene at the admin level to make sure that the drivers get proper driver training so that the accidents could be avoided. Better driver training and interventions help with reducing number of accidents.