Automatic Accident Detection: Assistance Through Communication Technologies and Vehicles

Abstract

[EN] The symbiosis between communication technologies and vehicles offer a priceless opportunity to improve assistance to people injured in traffic accidents, providing information about the incident to reduce the response time of emergency services. Determining more accurately the required human and material resources for each particular accident could significantly reduce the number of victims. This paper presents our novel system prototype especially designed to detect and provide faster assistance for traffic accidents, thereby minimizing the consequences on the passengers¿ health. The proposed system requires each vehicle to be endowed with an On-Board Unit responsible for detecting and reporting accident situations to an external Control Unit that estimates its severity, allocating the necessary resources for the rescue operation. The development of our prototype based on off-the-shelf devices, and its validation at the Applus+ IDIADA Automotive Research Corporation facilities, shows that our system could notably reduce the time needed to alert and deploy the emergency services after an accident takes place.