Covering these hazards, the service helps automakers to reach higher New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) scores. NCAPs are voluntary vehicle safety performance programs rating the safety of new passenger vehicles.
This year, amongst other things, NCAP ratings in Europe and Australia will include an assessment whether speed assistance systems inform drivers of a range of specific hazardous situations like traffic jams, accidents and objects on road with sufficient lead time to adapt their speed accordingly.
To detect and report as many hazards as possible, Here Road Alerts utilizes a large pool of different sources. These include:
- Vehicle sensor data from millions of cars on the road across multiple automakers, including head, fog and hazard lights, emergency brakes, anti-lock braking systems, wipers, electronic stability control and image sensors
- Billions of GPS data points from vehicles and devices on the road that Here gathers every day, leveraging over 150 different probe data providers
- Governmental road authorities
- Local in-country “journalistic” sources such as government websites, news outlets and social media reporting in traffic incidents
The service is delivered with low latency to ensure drivers are kept up-to-date on the latest hazards ahead of them.
“Here Road Alerts is a fully comprehensive hazard warning service,” said Giovanni Lanfranchi, senior vice president and chief product and technology officer at Here Technologies. “Where others may rely only on a limited number of data sources, we process data from a broad variety. More sources ultimately lead to an enriched service with greater coverage and more accuracy. This is the next step on our long-standing mission to increase the safety of millions of road users.”
