The Nevada Center for Advanced Mobility (Nevada CAM) and Nexar - a technology company providing the world's first vehicle-to-vehicle network for preventing road collisions and enabling autonomous mobility - partnered to create a statewide vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) network in the U.S.
This collaboration is designed to enhance safety on Nevada's roads and highways, spur economic development and job creation in the state, and introduce a series of smart transportation systems that will optimize infrastructure management, regional planning and inform policy throughout Nevada, according to Nexar.
Nexar's V2V network, that the company says has shown 24 percent reduction in collisions since its inception, uses smartphone dashcams and cellular technology to provide drivers real-time alerts to prevent vehicle, cyclist and pedestrian collisions.
The network is established in New York City, San Francisco and is building up in Las Vegas. The partnership with Nevada will maximize the benefits of Nexar's existing network by increasing the number of users on Nevada roads and providing the state live mapping capabilities through Nexar's recently launched CityStream data platform.
Nevada CAM, established in 2016 by the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development, creates advanced mobility opportunities for visitors, residents and industry.
"Leveraging the collective insight of government, academia, and private industry is the cornerstone of Nevada CAM's mission," said Dan Langford, Innovation Director of Nevada CAM. "The Nevada CAM-Nexar partnership represents an enormous opportunity to build upon those efforts so that Nevada - and ultimately other cities and states - can save lives and address key transportation issues through a cost-effective, market-based solution that benefits taxpayers."
Nevada CAM and Nexar's collective goal is, by 2020, to generate data covering 250 million miles on a weekly basis. Throughout the partnership Nevada CAM and Nexar said theywill continue to work together to identify additional opportunities with state, city and private vehicle fleets as well as consumers to expand the V2V network.
"We are thrilled to enter into this innovative partnership with the Nevada Center for Advanced Mobility," said Eran Shir, co-founder and CEO of Nexar. "I want to commend Nevada for being a leader in vehicular safety, and for recognizing the many other benefits - such as accelerated adoption of autonomous vehicles and the development of tools for advanced mobility and smart cities - that the vehicle-to-vehicle network can enable."
"This is an exciting partnership because it is this type of innovative technology that can help make our roads safer while providing real-time data on roadway use and traffic patterns, which is invaluable to our transportation planners as they make decisions regarding policy and infrastructure needs," added Tina Quigley, general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC). "Regional partnerships and collaborative data sharing ventures like this are integral to creating a smart transportation network that is safer and more efficient."
Nevada CAM and Nexar have outlined six key goals of the new partnership:
- Increase vehicular and pedestrian safety on Nevada roadways: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) believes that the implementation of V2V networks can help reduce crashes, not including those involving drivers under the influence, by 79 percent. Cars in the network receive real-time warnings of dangerous situations happening in and beyond an individual driver's line of sight. Over time the Nexar network crowdsources road dangers to all users and enables new Vehicle-to-Infrastructure use cases.
- Bring new jobs and business activity to Nevada: To support the statewide V2V network, Nexar expects to add more than a dozen new full-time jobs in Nevada as the network grows. Additionally, the establishment of the V2V network has the potential to support the growth of the transportation ecosystem and foster hundreds of additional jobs in technology, insurance, data management, software development, and autonomous vehicle training.
- Introduce a series of "smart state" systems to support Nevada transportation policy, enforcement and infrastructure management: Nexar's CityStream platform allows state and local transportation officials access to previously unavailable real-time, anonymous data related to roadway use, traffic patterns and compliance, and transportation infrastructure. The data has the ability to help local governments improve safety, efficiency and system performance, and reduce CO2 emissions by identifying impediments to traffic flow, managing road infrastructure, identifying "hot spots" (where accidents are likely to happen), and generally informing a holistic road management policy (including pedestrian traffic and safety).
- Offer enhanced fleet management capabilities to state and local governments: Nexar's next-generation telematics allow state and local fleet managers to access live fleet mapping, driver scoring, advanced collision reporting and reconstruction, and hazard detection/automatic vehicle re-routing. These tools have also been demonstrated to mitigate risk for fleets, improve utilization, reduce fraud, and expedite insurance claims.
- Accelerate the adoption of autonomous vehicles: V2V is a critical safety feature which extends the line-of-sight and allows for communication between human drivers and autonomous vehicles. Nexar's V2V network will accelerate Nevada's move to autonomous driving by utilizing the first ever live V2V (and V2X) network. As the network develops, Nexar will train Nevada traffic operations officials and help enable, monitor, manage, and ultimately certify autonomous vehicles.
- Collaborate on "Smart Transportation" research projects with Nevada Research Institutes: Utilize the data set generated by Nexar to understand road velocities, traffic blockers, evaluate human braking effectiveness, and generally inform a holistic road management policy (including pedestrian traffic and safety).
