Protecting Pedestrians: Safer Roads for All September is California’s Pedestrian Safety month — How Can AI Counter Rising Pedestrian Fatalities?

About eight years back, in 2016, state lawmakers declared September as ‘Pedestrian Safety Month’ in California due to rising pedestrian fatalities on the roadways and a general lack of awareness. Since then, local law enforcement and the California Office of Traffic Safety (CA OTS) have been helping to educate drivers and pedestrians and increase awareness. They offer safety tips, provide safety guides & toolkits and support advocacy groups to try to help tackle this issue. CA OTS also funds increased law enforcement training, distribution of road safety equipment and supporting infrastructure projects to make roads safer. These activities are important but have things actually improved? Unfortunately, not much. Pedestrian fatalities in California have increased 22% since the declaration with 1,057 pedestrian fatalities in 2023¹.  Further, children, the elderly, and people of color suffer the impact disproportionately². 

With all of the hype surrounding AI lately, can it be applied to help address this problem? Autonomous vehicles and robo-taxis have long promised increased safety for all, but after billions of dollars of investment, we are still seeing the challenges that these mobility systems face in dense urban areas where pedestrians and other vulnerable road users (VRUs) are most prevalent. Autonomous vehicles will certainly play a bigger role at some point in the future, especially in specific use cases like long-haul trucking, but more work is needed to achieve higher safety and reliability standards. However, AI and computer vision are already making an important contribution to pedestrian safety today by helping human drivers improve rather than trying to replace them.

Let’s see how Nauto’s predictive AI technology can help. Distracted driving is a growing challenge on our roads today that may lead to a potential collision with other vehicles or VRUs and is the leading loss causing behavior³. Our solution is designed to detect distracted driving and to send progressive behavior alerts for driver self improvement and reduction of distracted driving. Nauto is a pioneer in detecting distraction and customers can see up to 80% reduction in distracted driving within two weeks⁴. 

Nauto’s solution helps drivers address multiple risk factors inside and outside of the vehicle. Among other capabilities, it is also designed to detect and alert drivers for vulnerable road users including pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Accurate detection of VRUs is critical and collisions may involve serious injuries or fatalities. Collisions with vulnerable road users are often low g-force events and Nauto is designed to detect these events. Nauto’s proprietary AI is also designed to detect and alert drivers based on combined behaviors (e.g., pedestrian collision warning and driver distraction) that exponentially increase safety risk. Here’s a scenario- a driver is driving in a residential neighborhood where pedestrians and cyclists are present and he is holding a cell phone and texting while driving. The risk in this case is significantly higher as compared to when he is distracted and driving on a rural road at a safe speed.

Nauto is a leader in AI powered vehicle safety solutions. Our solution helps improve driver safety performance, reduce collision loss, and — most importantly — helps save lives. Nauto customers across multiple industry verticals have seen 40% - 80% collision reduction and to date we have helped avoid about 30,000 collisions⁵. We are humbled and proud to help in the journey on the road to zero fatalities.