It’s Time to Start Treating Road Deaths Like a Global Pandemic

At the time of writing most of the world is in lockdown. Our more vulnerable citizens are cocooning in their homes and our communities and politics are divided. It’s a global pandemic, caused by an uncompromising killer.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have been 1.2 million Covid-19 deaths worldwide, 44 million cases and the cost to the global economy is estimated to hit $1 trillion.

The world has rallied. United in the belief that this level of carnage is not acceptable we are taking draconian measures to stop the spread and investing billions in the science that will ultimately save millions of lives.

The automotive pandemic

According to the WHO, each year there are over 1.35 million road deaths worldwide, over 50 million people maimed and the cost to the global economy is estimated to be over $2 trillion (Link to the study here: WHO)

The numbers quoted above have not changed for more than 20 years. Unless action is taken, they will continue their current trajectory. Preventable human error is responsible for more than 90% of road accidents.

International regulatory policy for the last 20 years has focused on trying to make us better, more responsible drivers. This approach has failed consistently.

The focus by automakers on driver comfort and reactive safety measures has also, predictably failed.

Autonomous driving will ultimately solve the problem but has failed to move beyond level 2 autonomy despite $80 billion invested and will continue to do so while the roads are shared.

The vaccine

We started Provizio to solve the global road death pandemic. We believe that with the right focus, robotics and drivers can work together to reduce both road deaths and accidents to zero. 1.35 million to zero drives everything we do.

We are building augmented, guardian angel technology that will make us all better and safer drivers. We are using unparalleled ‘beyond line-of-sight’ sensor technology coupled with artificial intelligence ‘on-the-edge’ to perceive, predict and prevent accidents.

We are partnering with the top automotive OEMs and Tier 1’s to bring this capability to the masses.