One good factor that got here out of the pandemic is that extra folks picked up biking. In the primary three months of 2021, American shopper spending on bikes and biking equipment elevated by 34 % yr on yr to $8.2 billion. However, the pandemic additionally noticed extra die and undergo accidents whereas biking. According to the National Safety Council, 1,260 cyclists had been killed in 2020, a 16 % enhance from 2019.
It’s an issue that Ford thinks expertise can deal with. On Monday, the automaker announced it’s working with Commsignia, PSS, Ohio State University, T-Mobile and Tome Software to discover how a smartphone app might warn drivers of pedestrians and cyclists they might not see. As somebody sharing the street with a automobile, you’d set up the corporate’s software program in your telephone. With the assistance of Bluetooth Low Energy, automobiles with Ford’s Sync infotainment system would see you as “beacons.” If the automobile then determines there’s the potential for a crash, it can warn the motive force utilizing audiovisual cues.
According to Ford, its strategy has a couple of benefits. One is that Bluetooth LE is almost ubiquitous. The expertise has been a part of the Bluetooth protocol since 2009, that means each fashionable smartphone has entry to it. If you personal a Ford car, you received’t have to deliver your automobile to a dealership for a {hardware} improve because the Sync system options Bluetooth compatibility. The different benefit of utilizing Bluetooth LE is that your automobile received’t have to see pedestrians and cyclists earlier than it might probably warn you. Ford and T-Mobile are additionally engaged on a model of the app that makes use of 5G as an alternative of Bluetooth LE.
In apply, the corporate’s strategy is harking back to the COVID publicity notification apps some nations and states deployed in the beginning of the pandemic. As you could recall, these additionally used Bluetooth LE. However, regardless of backing from Apple and Google, they had been by no means efficient as a result of low utilization. In Canada, as an example, the federal COVID Alert app was solely downloaded 6.9 million times and logged 63,117 constructive assessments. Put one other approach, nowhere close to sufficient Canadians downloaded the software program to make it an efficient contact tracing instrument. Ford’s app is prone to expertise a few of the similar points.
As an avid bike owner, I can’t inform you how many individuals I’ve seen driving their bikes at evening with out an LED mild to make themselves seen to site visitors. On the opposite hand, statistics counsel motorists have been driving more aggressively lately, resulting in the aforementioned enhance in bike owner deaths in addition to car crashes. Any type of intervention can be welcome, however Ford’s app is not prone to be a significant answer if it ever involves market. While the Bluetooth LE answer to COVID had just one uphill climb, apps like Ford’s have two: adoption by cyclists and adoption by automakers.
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