City Insights: Incident Hotspots

There’s lots of reasons for traffic incidents on the roads. At Ford, we believe we can
reduce the number of these incidents. So, we set out to do something about them using the power of data and connected vehicles. In 2017, we connected up a fleet of vehicles in London, and collected over a million
kilometres of vehicle and driver data. Our team of data scientists then took this data, all 500 million
rows of it, and analysed it. So, we were able to find by using
certain indicators for the vehicle, such as hazard light usage and harsh braking. that we were able to identify certain locations where
there could be a potential incident. When we cross referenced our vehicle
data and open-source accident data, we were able to predict where
incidents were most likely to occur. Knowing where these incidents
might happen is one thing, proving the concept and understanding
why they might happen is another thing. Ford asked us to review eight hotspots,
to get a better understanding of what is going on at those junctions. At each location we implemented a number
of different equipments and technologies CCTV, ANPR, we had ATCs
that monitor speed and volume. We found that at many of the traffic hotspots that a significant number of road users
were not complying with traffic signals. We also found that some traffic signs were obscured by vegetation, and some were facing the wrong way. The recommendations that we made at each location, some of them were as easy as changing road layout, signage or just making road signs clearer. That’s the power of this analysis, uncovering those hidden road-safety hotspots and helping the cities do something about them. What we’re doing now is
reaching out to local authorities and sharing the data and the safety insights. We hope that with relatively small changes, cities can make a significant difference to road safety. We’re now working with other European cities,
including Cologne and Valencia, to understand how data-driven insights
can help their cities improve mobility. And we’re keen to talk to other cities and other partners, because the more vehicles we connect, the more data we collect, the more we can improve mobility for everyone.