This week (18th-24th November) is Road Safety Week, an annual event where road safety charity Brake, schools and businesses, come together to raise awareness about the number of accidents and deaths happening on our roads and encourage road users to be safer and more vigilant of others.
Currently, someone is killed or injured on a British road every 20 minutes with each of these tragedies preventable which is why this year’s theme asks us all to ‘Step up for Safe Streets’ and celebrate the amazing solutions that will make our roads safer and healthier.
At The Floow, we are driven by our mission to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone, and we believe that by harnessing the power of sensors, software and data we can work towards a safer future for all road users by designing and creating new advanced technologies and solutions.
We are also involved in a number of research projects which provide us with further understanding of driver behaviour and road usage patterns, informing not only the project we are involved in but also our product development and the future of mobility.
One such project is WM-Air, a multi-year project looking at the long-term effects of pollution across the West Midlands, to see how pollution is changing based on evolving vehicle technologies and changing driver behaviours.
The Floow is making use of our understanding of mass anonymised driver behaviour data collected from particular road sectors, to better understand localised driver behaviour trends in the West Midlands area. This allows us to see where driving behaviours alter as a result of the launch and implementation of measures and initiatives aimed at reducing pollution, e.g. Clean Air Zones, as well as understanding the impact these measures have on pollution outputs.
Work such as this is vital to help inform policy making and parliamentary decisions on how to improve our road network, lower pollution levels and make the roads safer as well as helping to plan for the future of mobility and prepare ourselves for the changes and challenges of electric and autonomous vehicles.
On 20th December I will present the opportunities from this longitudinal investigation to the UK parliamentary advisory council on transport safety highlighting how driver behaviour evidence can help to further understand risk on the road. This allows us to further develop our knowledge and expertise so ourselves, and others, will create and develop solutions contributing to safer and healthier roads for everyone.
Stepping up for Safer Streets is an important message now and for the future to showcase the organisations and solutions which are pushing the boundaries to create a safer environment on our roads, and how they are collaborating with legacy industries, such as insurers and vehicle manufacturers, to implement these changes and work to reduce some of the 1.3 million accidents and deaths which occur on our roads every year.
You can find out more about Road Safety Week and this year’s theme ‘Step up for Safe Streets’ on their website and to find out more about the WM-Air project, you can visit their website.
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