Digital transformation has entered even slow-moving industries. Technology has become increasingly important in driving innovation and everyday operations for transportation and road management companies. One recent research article called this movement ‘The Digital Revolution of the Transportation Industry‘. Everyone has a role to play within that general movement. Transportation businesses like auto companies and producers of supporting technology can join in the trend. Focus on and embrace technologies that have a potentially significant impact on roadway safety and innovation.
AI-supported road monitoring systems are just one of the many examples in this technology ecosystem of opportunity. AI systems can analyze dashcam footage to monitor road conditions, helping departments of transportation prioritize infrastructure build and repair projects. But that’s only the beginning. In reality, technology has the potential to permeate nearly every effort that drives innovation.
The Core Role of Car Makers in Increasing Roadway Safety
In recent years, carmakers have begun to leverage technology as a core way of increasing driver safety. Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) can take over steering and braking. Connected vehicles can dynamically involve external parties (like roadside assistance services and ambulances) if the driver needs urgent help.
But that’s only the beginning. These systems can do more to increase the safety of the individual driver and all drivers and pedestrians around them.
The connection of ADAS and connected vehicles offers one such solution. Imagine, for example, a system that automatically communicates any urgent action with vehicles around them. If two vehicles are connected to the same system, one needing to brake urgently could instantly communicate that information to the other, leading to an automatic brake that doesn’t need to be initiated by the second driver.
Some of these advancements are already happening. The Volkswagen Group, for example, announced an initiative in late 2024 to increase traffic safety beyond the drivers of their vehicles.
The press release puts it:
“Among other things, the vehicles generate high-resolution maps using anonymized swarm data. This ‘wisdom of the crowd’ helps vehicles with lane guidance in areas without road markings. Precise driving instructions and hazard information, which can be narrowed down by local weather, are also possible.”
The Volkswagen Group also envisions this technology spreading beyond its owned vehicle brands connected to the system. For example, vehicles can collect information on traffic beyond other vehicles, busy bike paths, parking lots, and other variables that ultimately make driving in this area safer—reducing the potential for road accidents involving non-vehicle victims.
Other carmakers are investing heavily in research designed to increase road safety. One recent example is Toyota. It launched three research projects last year to reduce accidents and casualties for all road users. One of them, the Vulnerable Road User Injury Prevention Alliance in coordination with the University of Michigan, is looking into accidents that involve pedestrians and cyclists and how vehicle manufacturers can help to minimize that number.
These initiatives show an increasing willingness on behalf of carmakers to expand their capabilities in improving roadway safety through digital means. For them to be successful, they have to become more comprehensive. Systems that communicate not just within a specific carmaker’s technology but in a central database, for example, could magnify the potential benefits outlined above.
How Navigation Products Can Help to Make Our Roads Safety
Some such systems are already in wide use today. Navigation products like Garmin and TomTom, for example, can help make our roads safer for all who share them. They, alongside digital mapping solutions like Google Maps and Waze, offer a plethora of data points that could all come into play.
Garmin, for example, has reacted to the rise of smartphones to pivot away from standalone navigational units for cars to a variety of more innovative ways to leverage its technological and GPS-based expertise:
- Partnerships with carmakers to offer integrated navigational systems in brands like Mercedes, Honda, BMW, Ford, Toyota, and more
- Navigational smartwatches that offer pedestrians and runners the ability to find their way around without having to hold a phone in their hand
- Mobile units that cyclists can mount onto their bicycles. These include the ability to charge the unit through the friction created by the wheels and brakes
- And more
This wide range of products offers the potential for a broad, interconnected ecosystem of navigational systems that at its best can share information across all units. Heavy traffic, inclement weather, incidental detours, and other information could be immediately shared between pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike, leading to all of them remaining safe on the roadways.
Waze
One tool already attempts to create this type of ecosystem: Waze. It is a navigational smartphone app on which users can report anything from traffic congestion to hazardous objects on the road. The app gamifies the reporting of these elements. This creates a comprehensive crowdsourced system that all users can benefit from and leverage more safely.
The problem, of course, is that all of these possibilities remain internally bubbled. Non-Waze users will not benefit from this type of safety reporting, just as a BMW driver who prefers Google Maps via Apple CarPlay instead of the integrated Garmin solution would not benefit from shared information. This, then, is how technology and transportation businesses can help to increase roadway safety and innovation: through an integrated information-sharing system that is app and tool-agnostic, helping everyone on the road.
The Path Toward Roadway Safety and Innovation
Put differently, no single brand or company can take on roadway safety on their own. But through a more concerted, centralized effort, companies can work to make things safer, while at the same time advancing their overall goal of reducing fatalities and accidents.
That, in turn, puts road-connected companies of all sizes in the same boat. Through various steps, we can all work to increase equity and efficiency in the maintenance of our roads, making them safer for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike.
