Zoomcar partners with Mobileye and ICICI Lombard to make driving safer

Zoomcar, a self-drive car rental company and Mobileye N.V., the advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), represented in India by Chartered NextGen Solutions, have signed a joint agreement along with ICICI Lombard, an insurance providers. Zoomcar has also partnered with Ideal Insurance Brokers, a premium insurance broking company that has been conceptualized to bring more order and transparency to the insurance sector. The development is aimed to use safety control and warning systems using monocular video processing algorithms running on a system-on-a-chip architecture (“EyeQ”) computing platform. The cost of road accidents to India’s economy is reckoned at around 3% of GDP, with 141,526 persons killed in 2014 (NCRB, 2015). The National Government is taking proactive measures to combat this tragedy. As a pure play self-drive car rental company, Zoomcar recognised this as an urgent operational challenge and moral imperative and hence, the partnership between these three companies was established.

Mobileye ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) is designed to prevent road accidents that occur primarily due to driver inattention. The system provides three primary warning types: lane departure, headway monitoring, and forward collision warning. The technology is based on a small camera located on the inside of the front windshield using image processing that provides warnings in dangerous situations. The proprietary system was developed by Mobileye, leveraging their world leading expertise in vision systems for accident prevention. The technology is developed at Mobileye HQ in Jerusalem, Israel.

Furthermore, an immediate outcome of the system is not only accident prevention, but the system’s effect on driver behavior and its contribution to correct and more precise driving habits such as indicating prior to lane departure and safe headway keeping (among others). Mobileye has been installed by Zoomcar in the first 40 Mahindra and Ford vehicles starting with the capital, New Delhi, followed by other metro cities in India. Zoomcar plans to leverage these initial learnings and subsequently add Mobileye ADAS to over 10,000 cars by the end of 2017. Along with this Mobileye collaboration, Zoomcar has introduced a litany of other technological enhancements onto its platform. A speeding alert system enabled via an in-car ‘smart device’ helps the company monitor the speed of its vehicles in real-time and penalise over-speeding customers. With the recent advent of novel Bluetooth based hardware tied to the OBD (on board diagnostics) port, Zoomcar actually monitors the driver performance by assessing braking, steering, fuel efficiency, and much more. This intelligence is then pushed back to the driver in real-time to ensure the individual drives safer for the rest of his trip. As a result, penalties can be imposed on customers exhibiting certain types of rash behaviour like inappropriate clutch riding, harsh acceleration, etc. This system helps Zoomcar leverage objective criteria to rate drivers, thereby improving driver/passenger safety and improving the overall health of the vehicle. This new platform also provides dynamic feedback on in-trip fuel efficiency, thereby helping to ensure that the driver can save significant money on fuel (the largest variable cost on any trip). Overall, this deep learning system undoubtedly makes the self-drive industry far safer than other technology powered transportation solutions like on-demand taxis and buses.

Michael Hirsh, Regional Manager; India, Mobileye said, “I am thrilled and honoured to have the opportunity to partner with Zoomcar as it leads the way in India’s road safety drive, and even more so to have found here such willing and visionary partners for this worthy endeavour. These are exciting times and, given the pace of technological acceleration in India in all sectors, and degree of commitment as demonstrated by Zoomcar, I believe Indians can look forward to enjoying lifesaving ADAS technologies in the immediate term. We are proud to be taking part in the charting of India’s road safety roadmap.”

In addition to that Zoomcar has also partnered with ICICI Lombard as an insurance partner. The two companies began their partnership at the time of Zoomcar’s inception in 2013 and this dynamic new collaboration is a natural extension of their earlier relationship. The collaboration with such a leading insurance company demonstrates the importance which the industry is placing on safety technology as a way of preventing traffic accidents, reducing fatalities, and improving insurance premium affordability.

According to Mr. Sanjay Datta; Chief Underwriting, Reinsurance & Claims, ICICI Lombard, “We believe that the warning system’s technology will significantly reduce the possibility of car accidents due to drivers’ in attention and therefore reduction in high severity losses such as third part claims, bodily injuries or damages to the vehicle. As a leading insurance company in India, our endeavor is always to minimize risk and provide better solutions for our customers. The initiative is designed to reduce accidents for those installing safety systems in their vehicles. Globally, insurers underwrite motor insurance on the basis of driving experience and risk attributed to the vehicle / driver. This joint initiative by us is a step towards such risk based underwriting. Customers who adopt Advanced Driver Assistance Systems like Mobileye are not only adopting a new, improved and safer way of travel but possibly saving lives as well!”

“At Zoomcar, it’s critical that we leverage the latest products to ensure the maximum safety and security for our rapidly expanding customer base. With this exciting partnership with Mobileye and ICICI Lombard, we will significantly reduce the number of major accidents in our fleet. This is enormously important because it helps bolster our community’s confidence in the safety of self-drive. Over time, our vehicles will remain in even better condition, thereby allowing even more individuals the opportunity to experience the freedom of self-drive. The purpose of the Mobileye technology is to provide real-time assistance to our customers so they can avoid potentially dangerous accidents. In addition to the strong support of the Mobileye team, we also welcome the cooperation of a leading insurance like ICICI Lombard. This really demonstrates an industry wide effort to tackle the road safety challenge” said Greg Moran; CEO and co-founder, Zoomcar.

Extensive studies have shown that some 80% of crashes and 65% of near-crashes involved some form of driver inattention within three seconds before the event. Mobileye provides real-time audible and visual alerts to the driver when danger is imminent, thus allowing for corrective action to be taken to avoid or mitigate the accident. The provision of such real-time feedback to drivers also instils a keen awareness of the location of the vehicle in relation to the road and other road users, thereby improving driver behaviour. This, in turn, leads to a reduction in fuel consumption and vehicle wear and tear, due to drivers maintaining a safe distance and driving less “aggressively.