IOI
Nitin Gadkari invited participants to Nagpur, Maharashtra, for a pilot project aimed at reducing accidents there by 50 percent using artificial intelligence.
“A collaborative effort between the government, Intel, INAI, IIIT-Hyderabad, CSIR-CRRI (Central Road Research Institute), Mahindra & Mahindra and Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), the project will focus on vehicle safety, mobility analysis and road infrastructure safety to move towards a “Vision Zero” accident scenario”, a release said.
NMC vehicles will have collision avoidance technology, which can reduce accidents and near misses by up to 60 percent. Additionally, sensors will help map the dynamic risk of the entire road network, which can be used to identify accident-prone areas, also known as black spots, the release said.
Gadkari said 250 people die every year in 1,500 accidents in Nagpur and that AI will be used to map accident spots, which his ministry will repair. It will also identify road surface condition, signage, marking, signal details, type of vehicle, model in use, and utility assets.
“The crash severity index (which is found by calculating fatalities and serious injuries in an accident) in Nagpur was 21.22 in 2018, 24.83 in 2019, and 70.17 in 2020, this increase coming during the COVID-19 pandemic (when most areas were under lockdown), which is not a good thing at all,” he said.
As of the end of the last three years, Nagpur had an average of eight road accident fatalities per one lakh people, which was more than four times as many as in a much bigger city like Mumbai. Gadkari emphasized the importance of resolving this situation quickly.
IIT-H Director Professor PJ Narayan and Intel India Country Head Nivruti Rai spoke at the celebration, and they both hoped the “iRASTE” project would help create the blueprint for zero accidents in India.
