Earlier this month the Department of Transportation announced its intention to use data to make America’s highways safer.
To begin with, this goal comes in the form of two pilot projects — both of which will integrate existing crash data sets with newer forms of “big data.”
“Advances in data science have the potential to transform the Department’s approach to safety research and provide insights that can help improve highway safety,” U.S. DOT Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement.
In one pilot, DOT crash data will be integrated with crowdsourced hazard data from the navigation app Waze to see if this information can be used to predict likely future accidents. “This initiative will examine the feasibility of using this new crowd-sourcing application to provide a reliable, timely indicator of reportable traffic crashes, and estimate crash risk based on Waze-reported hazards,” a statement reads.
More>>