Drive Safe

Thousands of fatalities and injuries occur on the roads in Ghana yearly.

Speeding and inattention on the part of drivers account for most of the human-related causes of road accidents.

These accidents have severe economic and social repercussions.

To reduce this, we've developed a Smart GPS Tracking device that helps model driver's behaviour.

Core to the system are voice alarms that play via the vehicle's speakers to warn drivers when they exceed preset speed limits. 

The system can also temporarily shut down the vehicle's engine if the driver keeps ignoring the warnings. 

It also allows 2-way communication so the system administrators can call in in real-time to talk to the driver of the speeding vehicle.

If scaled globally, a lot of lives that would be saved.

A lot of jobs would also be created as many technicians would be needed to install the trackers in vehicles and perform routine maintenance.

Each year, thousands of lives are lost in road accidents in Ghana. An even greater number sustain severe injuries. From 1991 to 2018, over 46,000 lives have been lost due to road accidents in the country (https://thebftonline.com/2019/...)

Of the human-related causes of road accidents, speeding and driver inattention are the main culprits.

This same trend occurs globally.

Solving the issue of speeding would greatly reduce its role in causing road accidents and thus save lives.

Our solution is Drive Safe, a smart GPS Tracker installed in vehicles that controls the speeding habits of drivers via voice alarms.

Drive Safe constantly tracks the physical location and speed of vehicles and sends this data to the cloud.

When a driver speeds beyond preset limits, the system issues voice alarms (in selected languages) to warn the driver to reduce speed.

It can also temporarily shut down the vehicle's engine to force the driver to comply with speed limits.

It also allows 2-way communication so the system administrators can call in in real-time to talk the driver of the speeding vehicle.

Drive Safe uses Global Positioning System (GPS) to determine the physical location of vehicles and their speeds. It also uses an Internet-of-Things (IoT) cloud platform for processing data.

Our solution targets the general public since almost everyone uses vehicle transportation at least some time during the year.

Even pedestrians are affected significantly by road accidents when they occur.

A very special group we are targeting is the public transportation system using buses. Because of the higher number of people who commute using public buses, any accident involving these result in high casualties.

By having Drive Safe installed in public buses, passengers also receive the voice warning messages when the driver exceeds his limits and can call the driver to order.

We've conducted market surveys with road transport operators on the Ghanaian market and none have this added voice warning feature so far.

Another important factor is the number of jobs that will be created from this. Hundreds of technicians will be needed to install the trackers in vehicles nationwide and provide routine maintenance services, thereby creating employment.

Our solution has at least 2 advantages: road accident prevention and simultaneous job creation.

We address 2 very important areas in which we save lives by reducing road accidents caused by speeding whilst simultaneously creating sustainable employment in the process.

GPS Trackers in vehicles isn't something new. However, playing back human voice warnings to drivers when they speed beyond limits is an area that has not been explored adequately.

The psychological effect of a speeding driver hearing a human voice warning him/her to reduce speed can be very powerful. Even more so when the driver hears the voice of his loved one (say spouse or child or close family or friend) telling him/her to slow down so he/she arrives home safe to family.

Our solution harnesses Global Positioning System (GPS) to determine the physical location of vehicles and their speeds. 

GPS receivers inside the tracking device receive signals from satellites in space and use these signals to compute the speed and physical location of the GPS receiver.

Also embedded in our hardware is GSM/GPRS module which allows the tracker to communicate with online servers to exchange information. The communication can either be via internet data or voice telephony since the hardware has a microphone and speaker to enable 2-way communicataion.

A device for shutting down the vehicle engine is also added in case this action needs to be performed in an applicable situation (e.g. where a bus driver is driving dangerously and refuses to slow down when warned by the tracker or system administrators)

GPS technology is already widely used, even in mobile phones to enable location and navigation (e.g. Uber)

All smartphones now come with GPS sensors as default.

Research has already been conducted on In-Vehicle Audio Warning System on Driver’s Speed Control and found to be very effective in reducing speeding habits. 

https://www.apa.org/monitor/20...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

https://www.nhtsa.gov/files/81...

Our system currently serves 100 clients. This is for testing only the GPS tracking feature of the hardware.

In 1 year, we aim to reach 1000 users

In 5 years, we target 10000 users.

Actually, since almost all the population in a country travel in a vehicle at one point or another, we believe that indirectly we serve a much wider number (which is all vehicle users).

Our goals are:

1. Reduce road accidents and loss/injury caused by speeding by at least 50%

2. Create thousands of meaningful jobs nationwide and beyond

Since GPS tracking technology is already a matured space, we plan to partner with similar companies to carry our products so we can scale faster and wider.

The main barrier is lack of funding.

The funding is needed to employ workers, access materials for production and deploying the system.

We plan to overcome the financial barrier by applying for funding from organizations who have a vested interest in reducing road accidents and simultaneously creating employment.

Currently, we are 3 (1 full-time and 2 part-time workers).

Evans Amegashie as the product developer designing the hardware and firmware.

1 other person who installs the tracker in vehicles.

1 person who does the web and mobile application development (part-time)

Our team is a good blend of business and technical expertise.

Among us, we have expertise in:

Electrical/Electronic Engineering (Bachelor of Science degree)

Hardware design, fabrication and assembly on printed circuit boards

Embedded system development

Mobile and web application development

Business operation and product marketing and sales

Our business model involves using social media to market our products.

When we get customers, there's a one-time cost for purchasing the hardware and then yearly subscription fees for using the GPS tracking service.

The value we provide are:

Real time tracking of vehicles so the owners can have peace of mind that they can locate their vehicles in case of theft etc

Reduced road accidents and loss of lives since speeding habits are put in check

We aim to make the hardware as cheap as possible so many can afford.

We foresee that an initial donation/grant will be enough to kickstart operations.

After this, the customers that we will be able to bring in will be enough to make the business self-sustaining.

We are applying to solve as we see it to be a good source of funding with less prohibitive terms compared to taking on loans from banks and other financial organizations.

We believe many lives can be saved with our solution as well as many jobs created and so we are actively seeking for means to make this a reality.

Since we aim to reach a very wide user base in Ghana and beyond, we seek a distribution network for this.

Funding as explained previously will help us cover expenses and procure materials to set things rolling

And finally marketing and media exposure will help with publicity so we can push out our product to a wider audience

Media agencies for publicity

Telecommunication service providers since the trackers need GSM and mobile network access to enable voice and data communication.

Funding agencies for cash infusion

With the Andan Prize, we will recruit and train refugees so they can be part of our technical team for installing the hardwares in vehicles.

This will provide meaningful employment and livelihood to refugees.

With this prize, we will provide training in electrical engineering to our technicians in the areas of basic electrical/electronic technology, practical skills such as soldering and hardware assembling.

Since installation of the trackers is done on vehicles, we will also provide training to people we recruit in the area of vehicle/automotive electronics.

This will give them a head-start with which they can even venture into businesses focused on auto-electronics

One area which we plan to explore more is analyzing the GPS data which our trackers transmit to our cloud servers.

From this analysis,we aim to predict dangerous driving patterns and even predict driver distraction/inattention in the event of say using a mobile phone whilst driving.

Our solution has the potential to directly impact millions of lives as it's related to road accidents.

With this prize, we can extend our solution globally and also provide jobs for many thousands.