Mercedes Wants To Use Your Driving Data To Help Fix Boston’s Streets

No longer volition roadworthy attraction crews successful Boston request to beryllium exclusively connected calls to 311, the city’s non-emergency telephone line, due to the fact that Mercedes announced contiguous that information gathered by its vehicles’ suspension systems volition beryllium utilized to assistance place potholes, unevenness, and different roadworthy hazards.

As portion of a aviator programme exploring vehicle-to-infrastructure connection successful Mercedes vehicles, Boston volition person entree to anonymized information showing wherever blistery spots of suspension enactment hap passim the city.

“This concern with The City of Boston aims to connection a deeper knowing of the infrastructure successful which vehicles run by securely gathering, processing, and visualizing anonymized conveyance data,” said Dimitris Psillakis, CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA. “The sophisticated systems successful our vehicles tin supply invaluable insights regarding what is happening on roadways.”

Read: Police Use AI To Analyze Driving Patterns And Surveil All Drivers

That information volition past beryllium utilized to pass metropolis officially astir areas wherever improvements are necessary. Although the metropolis already receives plentifulness of thoroughfare reports from citizens done 311, it says that Mercedes’ information volition inactive beryllium useful.

“It is good known that not each neighborhoods and communities use Boston 311 astatine the aforesaid rate, yet 311 is simply a large operator of however immoderate City resources are allocated,” said Stefanie Costa Leabo, the City of Boston’s Chief Data Officer. “We are ever anxious to find ways to mitigate this bias successful reporting, and are excited to measure whether by investigating caller technologies oregon incorporating these caller information we tin place cases that different would person gone unreported and unaddressed successful bid to administer metropolis resources much equitably.”

Whether information from Mercedes’s highly precocious luxury vehicles volition assistance make a much equitable strategy remains to beryllium seen, but this isn’t the archetypal clip the metropolis has explored akin technology. Boston antecedently experimented with utilizing accelerometer and GPS information from smartphones to place roadworthy defects. Through that, it discovered that sunken inferior covers were 1 of the biggest causes of sudden bumps successful the city.

Although Boston volition beryllium the archetypal metropolis successful North America to payment from Mercedes’ data, the automaker has already shared it with a fig of European governments.