Car Accident App? lol

[cjdelphi]

I was thinking of writing an App that measures how fast you're driving via GPS and if you're doing say >70mph (or whatever) and you suddenly come to a sharp stop and the accelerometer goes crazy maxing out all the sensors, would it be fair to say?....

THEY CRASHED!!!

Then have the application dial emergency services and play / loop back a message (unless the user is fine (to stop and take over) saying this is Joe Bloggs phone and a Crash has taken place "Get address from GPS" the car was traveling 69mph there has been no response from the user and this is an Automated response please send Ambulance"...

The application could then txt/sms all this information to say 3 other people to alert them of where they are and the fact they've been in a crash....


This app probably already been written anyway, if it has not, would it be worth a $1 per app? lol

 

[Raven Luni]

What if youre overtaking on the motorway?

 

[Rleo6965]

Another idea from our Mad Scientist.

But, I like the idea of saving lives..

 

[cjdelphi]

Well, overtake as much as you want, there's no sudden 'stop', speed does not kill, speed has never killed a thing ever.... sudden de-acceleration on the other hand claims lives every day, this application may save your life in getting help/aid to you far far faster than normally, if this happened in the dead of night, that's what you'll end up being at least if the phone survives intact it will give out your location and support sent straight away...

 

[(*steve*)]

You need to be very careful how you detect speed.

What happens if you enter a tunnel for instance?

What if you exit the tunnel and stop?

What if you crash at the exit of the tunnel?

What if you are in a city (say) and are getting multi-path reflections which make it seem like you're moving very fast just prior to stopping at some traffic signals?

How do toy actually determine that speed has dropped to zero, or that it hasn't?

I use an app called "runkeeper" which keeps track of my speed and position and "automatically" pauses when I come to a stop. So it tracks at least some of what you plan on doing. It has major problems detecting me coming to a stop, taking up to 10 seconds to do so (albeit it is faster if I have been moving rapidly). If I'm walking, it occasionally thinks I've stopped when I haven't. When walking under a bridge it often thinks I've stopped. Sometimes it gets weird eronious GPS values and makes my speed very high as I dart out to some odd point, then back to my path again. riding under the deck of a bridge, I sometimes get weird multipath errors so it thinks I'm riding in a curve out over the river. These are all minor issues with something that simply tracks how far I've walked or ridden, but become much more serious if you're going to use them to predict whether I've had an accident and use that conclusion to call emergency services.

 

[(*steve*)]

Look, I have to add that I've worked in the GIS fields for some time (although I'm in biotech at present) and some of my GIS was done while working for an emergency services provider (think smoke and flames).

I know what I'd do to runkeeper to fix some of the problems (especially the start/stop ones) but others are much harder.

One thing you'd need to do is establish that the vehicle has stopped for some length of time (and still has good GPS signal). You'd also have to do some reasonableness checking and dead reckoning to determine probable behaviour at the exit of GPS dead zones.

If the device has accelerometers (like an iphone) then seeing them exhibit a spike would also be useful (possibly). but if someone parks their car and gets out of it, dropping the iphone, you wouldn't want to call an ambulance!

There may be issues of liability. False positives are one thing, but a false negative could be another...

 

[cjdelphi]

Pseudo Code.

Xaxis,Yaxis,Zaxis,G: Float;
HowFast: Float;
howFastOld Float;
XAxis:= Accelermoter.X;
Y....:=.Y
Z = .Z //etc

So we know How faster under GPS, and we monitor the accelerometer, now, on more or less any phone which has a GPS will also have an accelerometer, and using those two alone we always have 2 things required..

//do the maths to work out the sensor info.
//do the math get the Speed of GPS and Height.(Altitude)

If Speed>30
Is SafeToDrive == True
{
DoNothing(update the screen bleah);
}
else
{
//Not safe what!?
CallOperator; //in 10 seconds give time for user to override
DisplayOverrideForUse;
}

The program checks every few seconds and if in the time span of say 3 seconds has all of a sudden gone from speed 50 to 0, and the accelerometer went mad, it's safe to say accident has occured, then you fire off the events

the programming is not too bad I could write this application in Eclipse / Java but...it will only run on phones that support Android with GPS and Accelerometer...

Next question, would people use it?

 

[BobK]

I am afraid you are too late:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Automatic_Collision_Notification

 

[donkey]

another alternative is connecting a sensor to the airbag and when they are deployed it calls emergency services and uses the gps to give a location.
there are a heap of ideas for crash sensors I have heard of, but there is one major problem with them all.... no signal no help, in metropolitan areas a gps signal bounces around more then flubber in a flubber prism. out in the sticks(country side) mobile/cell reception becomes an issue.
also if you put it on a smartphone if the app freezes the smartphone shuts the app down and there would be no notification of this(happened to my alarm app... it had purdy pictures with it) so maybe a dedicated device is in order.
one last thing to note is a failsafe of some sort so if the device is accidentally triggered you can switch it of to let emergency services get to people who actually need it, but you can have something that deactivates through the accident, for example a book on the back seat comes flying forward and hits the deactivate switch.