GSW
Galileo Speed Warning (GSW)

We know that inappropriate speed kills. Conversely, lower speeds contribute significantly to greater road safety and a reduction in road deaths. Research has demonstrated that 7 out of 10 pedestrians who are hit by a car doing 50km/h are killed; this reduces to 1 in 10 for cars doing 30 km/h. Governments, through policy, public awareness and effective enforcement, have played a role in increasing road safety and reducing average road speeds. Yet, even in the face of such high-profile campaigns, drivers remain reluctant to change behaviour. In addition to these campaigns, the authors suggest that new ideas are needed to further encourage and ensure this beneficial change continues.

Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) technology informs the driver of the speed limit for the road that they are driving and can influence their behaviour by either preventing the driver from going faster than the speed limit (known as Mandatory or Voluntary ISA) or advising through an audible beep or speech that the driver is speeding.

However ISA has been around for over ten years, and the Swedish trials involving more than 5 000 participants took place over seven years ago. Why hasn’t adoption been greater?

Description

The project is broken down into the following phases:

• technical and commercial feasibility studies;
• design and development of the CARAT Counter;
• field trials of the CARAT Counter with Transport for London as part of their ISA trials;
• demonstrations at the Galileo Applications Event, insurance companies and other interested stakeholders.

Objectives

The scope of this project includes the design and development of a new product innovation called the GSW CARAT (Continuous Assessment of Road ATtidude) COUNTER, which is based on the concept of ‘reward’ schemes in other industry sectors ( for example air miles, Nectar points, retail loyalty card schemes). The CARAT Counter simply increases as the driver keeps within specified speed limit thresholds; if they break the thresholds whilst driving they stop receiving CARATs. The driver can review how many CARATs they have collected and also how many they could have collected through safer driving. Analysis of how the CARATs can be traded or used to receive rewards and incentives, and the influence such rewards have on a driver’s long-term adoption of ISA is also part of the project scope. 
The core objectives for the project are:

• to design and develop an innovative new product which allows good driving behaviour to be rewarded;
• to partner with other SMEs in the design and development, and also in the future commercialisation of the product.