Mobileye is mapping 28,000 miles of Barcelona’s roads daily to improve safety

Spain’s road safety authority, the Directorate-General for Traffic (DGT), and the City of Barcelona with Mobileye presented data from the first two months of the Autonomous Ready initiative, a programme intended to enhance the safety of streets while analysing the status of infrastructure to continue improving roads for the future.

“At Mobileye, safety comes first. And for that reason, we are in the continuous process of technological development to protect the most vulnerable road users and to lay the groundwork for future autonomous vehicles. Any city that wants to make its streets safer now can take advantage of this advanced technology to do so. Through the Autonomous Ready initiative, Spain is pioneering the adoption of innovative technology and becoming a world leader in the field of road safety and mobility,” said Gil Ayalon, Mobileye Director for the EMEA region

Through the Autonomous Ready project, the City of Barcelona and DGT are using cutting-edge driver assistance technology available now from Mobileye to make the city safer, both immediately and in the long term. Equipping fleet vehicles that travel roads at a high frequency serves a dual purpose: Fleets gain a significant safety boost, while the city gains valuable insights into the most accident-prone points in the city where infrastructure can be improved.

Barcelona's public-private collaboration incentivises city fleets to join the project by providing preferred status to these “safe fleets” in areas such as parking, access, and loading and unloading privileges. Additionally, these fleets are preparing themselves for expected EU regulations mandating the use of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) technology beginning in 2022.

The pioneering initiative is intended to make Barcelona safer in two main ways. First, by equipping hundreds - and, eventually, thousands - of fleet vehicles with Mobileye retrofit collision avoidance and mapping technology, those vehicles will be involved in fewer accidents. Secondly, by passively surveying the roads of Barcelona and sending that data to the cloud for analysis, the city can improve its infrastructure and make city streets safer for all.

As equipped fleets travel the streets of Barcelona on their usual routes, on-board cameras collect anonymous information about roadside infrastructure that is then aggregated with external data, such as accident history or weather information. The aggregated data becomes the basis for the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the detection of potential dangers and the identification of hidden problems that generate mobility risks.

Over time, as these sensors gather more information, city leaders can gain an in-depth understanding of the city's risk profile by identifying patterns of behavior in the daily traffic in which vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians co-exist. As a result, city streets are safer today, while evidence-based infrastructure improvements make for safer and more efficient mobility tomorrow.

Around 400 vehicles from 12 local fleets have been equipped with Mobileye 8 Connect, Mobileye's most advanced retrofit ADAS system powered by the EyeQ 4. Mobileye-equipped vehicles collectively travel 28,000 miles - or 45,000 kilometres - daily, sending data to the cloud about what the on-board camera “sees”.

In the first two months of the project, 240,000 pedestrians and 37,000 cyclists were detected. The equipped vehicles have experienced 668 near-miss collisions that were potentially prevented by safety alerts issued to the driver. The number of Mobileye-equipped vehicles is expected to grow to 1,000 in 2020, and to 5,000 within three years.

Today, the Autonomous Ready initiative is possible thanks to the commitment to safe and sustainable mobility of the following partners whose fleets have joined the project: Alphabet, Aquaservice, Calidad Pascual, Correos, Endesa, Gestores 1880 SAU (GESCO), Ferrovial, Obremo, Fraikin, Logista (Nacex Integra2), Línea Directa and Seur, among others.