DriveOhio, an initiative of the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), is partnering with Nexar CityStream in a new pilot to improve road safety around workzones, which will run through August along the state’s US 33 Smart Mobility Corridor.
In the last 10 years, there have been almost 60,000 road incidents involving work zones in Ohio, with more than 14,000 of them resulting in either injuries or fatalities. Last year was the worst year for work zone crashes resulting in a record-high 6,574 work zones crashes in Ohio; a 40% increase from the year before. The new pilot aims to reverse this trend.
With more than a billion miles driven on the Nexar network by users of its dash cam app and its accompanying cameras, it is able to analyze roadway data and produce insights for cities and states. The new pilot will identify and monitor workzones with lane closures, as well as digitally map road signs and monitor them for changes.
Currently, ODOT deploys field technicians to monitor whether roadside safety regulations are being observed at workzone sites but these employees can’t be everywhere at once. Nexar CityStream will allow ODOT to monitor workzones remotely and observe whether they are set up safely for the workers and drivers alike, permit compliance, and which sites are regularly causing traffic build-ups, so public officials can use a data-driven approach to deploy resources when and where they’re needed.
These insights are produced from Nexar’s community of users, who drive with a dash cam for their protection, and along the way help make roads safer. The information that is shared by Nexar is fully anonymized and aggregated, so that it cannot be re-identified. No one has access to a driver’s personal data except for the driver. It meets EU’s GDPR, to provide users globally with strict data protection regardless of lesser local legal requirements.
