- [Narrator] In the U.S there's over 37,000 people
that die on the roads every year.
Pretty much every public agency we talk to
safety is one of their top priorities.
- [Narrator] Oftentimes cities are really looking at
crash data,
but imagine if you had a world
where you started to look beyond the point
of where a crash actually happened but the near misses.
- [Narrator] Data on those near misses
is really considered like a holy grail
in transportation planning.
- [Narrator] Ford's position
as one of the largest car makers,
really gives us a unique perspective.
We have millions of connected vehicles on the road, today
and we're actively generating this data.
- [Narrator] Safety Insights is a really dynamic tool
to help cities to really have a holistic view of safety.
- [Narrator] We allow them to move beyond
just finding problems and actually looking at solutions.
and the predicted impact of those solutions
before they invest a single dollar.
(Upbeat music)
But ultimately the goal is to save lives.
- [Narrator] Here is the Ford City Insights studio.
We're able to visualize all sorts of different elements,
simulations, scenarios, data and showcase
a lot of different mobility projects that we have underway.
- [Narrator] My background originally is in urban planning.
Essentially, you're looking at the systems
of the built environment
and figuring out how can those components work together
more seamlessly.
- [Narrator] I am a mobility strategist with Ford Mobility.
Safety is very important to the transportation network
from every perspective,
whether that's the person who is crossing the street,
whether that's the bus, whether that's a scooter,
we have to really look at safety
not just from the perspective of the person
who's in the vehicle,
but also everything else that's outside of the vehicle.
And that's why Safety Insights is so important.
- [Narrator] We started the journey with Safety Insights,
really trying to understand how we could build
a tool that would be really useful for cities
to improve traffic safety.
We were fortunate enough to be able to do
kind of a pilot project with the city of Ann Arbor.
- [Narrator] This is a 3D model of downtown Ann Arbor
in Michigan.
And so from a safety insights perspective,
the first thing we really start with
is just looking at the crash data.
So if I'm the city's transportation engineer
I'm looking at this data and I'm trying to make sense of it.
And that's where our hotspot algorithm
within Safety Insights really comes in.
So what we're doing is not just telling you
where there's the most crashes
but instead what we're doing is we're looking at the model
that generates
which locations have the greatest difference
between what we would expect
and what actually has occurred there.
Identifying hotspots is useful in itself.
But the one thing that it doesn't tell you
is where crashes are almost occurring.
- [Narrator] And that's where we see a lot of
exciting opportunity with connected vehicle data.
So vehicles that have an embedded cellular modem within them
that's activated and that's capturing and transmitting data
about what's happening as that vehicle moves around.
We're able to understand patterns
of which roads have more harsh braking
or excessive acceleration events or traction control events
or lane departure or Ford collision warnings.
There's all sorts of safety related events
that are maybe indicative of near misses.
So in this case
we can take a look at harsh braking events across Ann Arbor.
There's a number of locations that are bright red.
They have a lot of harsh braking,
but they're not near hotspots
right?
This can be really informative as a tool for foresight
and looking into being more proactive and seeing, okay,
something's emerging here.
Maybe we wanna make a change
before it manifests in a lot of crashes.
- [Narrator] We didn't just wanna combine data.
We wanted to apply a layer of analytics on top of it
to help our users make sense of all of that data.
(dramatic music)
There's hundreds, if not, you know, thousands,
of different solutions that
you may wanna consider.
Counter measures could be changing the signal timing
at an intersection, it could be adding a pedestrian crosswalk,
a protected bike lane.
And so what we do is,
through our tool we actually allow our user to see
what the predicted impact would be
if they implemented any of these solutions
at any particular location.
So they can see what the predicted crash reduction would be
and what that crash reduction would mean
in terms of cost savings to society.
We know safety is a priority
but just having the staff time and resources
and the data all compiled and the methodology streamlined
and automated,
that's really a big hurdle.
And so even if we're able to impact that in a small way,
the impact would still be huge.
Right now we're at a stage where
safety insights is available for cities today.
- [Narrator] Ford has an amazing number of employees
who are beyond brilliant,
but how do you think about matching that level of expertise
to what's on the ground, and what people actually need.
- [Narrator] As Ford makes this evolution
into a mobility company.
We have to understand safety
for the transportation system as a whole,
and hopefully help to improve that.
That's really been our focus.
- [Narrator] when we take a system wide approach
we really start to see,
where are some of those gaps are, within the transit network
and how Ford can step in
to fill those gaps
- [Narrator] To be able to be at a company like Ford
to potentially play a transformative role
in this large scale problem
is something that is incredibly exciting.
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