3 teams, including one from IIT Madras win 'Hack-cidents' contest; Union Ministry of
Transport and Highways has sought to support start-ups to develop new technologies for
road safety quickly.

Three teams from across the country have been declared winners of hackathon "Hackcidents" to improve road safety. The hackathon was organised by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras's transportation engineering division in the Department of Civil Engineering and CSR arm of Renault Nissan Technology and Business Centre India (RNTBCI).

According to the Union Ministry of Transport and Highways, over 1.5 lakh fatalities are
recorded and over four lakh people are injured in road crashes annually, accounting for one of the leading causes of deaths and disabilities in the country.

The Ministry has sought to partner with and support start-ups working in the field of road safety to develop and deploy new technologies quickly. The final round of the hackathon was held on April 22 and eight shortlisted teams presented their prototypes

The team from Rungta College of Engineering and Technology of Bhilai designed a device to measure the shock wave produced by the collision of vehicles due to an accident. The device can share details such as location, time and of victims to help hospitals, police stations and associated devices such as mobile phones of family members to prevent delay in rescue and help reaching the victims.

The team from Maharishi Markandeshwar Engineering College, Mullana, focused on
providing pothole location alert and drowsiness detection and alerting system. The team will develop a mobile application capable of interacting with the hardware and getting GPS coordinates of potholes and alerting the user via the hardware.

A team from IIT Madras has proposed to create an advanced collision avoidance system. It lies in the intersection of advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles. The system will monitor traffic and database of locations with high accident rates and warn drivers of possible situations in vulnerable locations. The system will be compatible and can be implemented in all four-wheelers.

RNTBCI senior vice-president Harada Hirotake said while several advancements had focused on improving the vehicle performance and the environment, the teams that
participated in the hackathon had presented ideas to tackle driver behaviour.

Mr. Hirotake and B. Ravindran, head of Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI at the institute, flagged off a Metropolitan Transport Corporation bus equipped with sensors to improve safety on the occasion.