Inspiration
Jan 10th of 2011, I lost my younger cousin due to a road accident on a highway, he was on his solo bike trip & was hit by a truck - He could have been saved if only had the truck driver stopped & taken him to the hospital. What was even more unfortunate was that due to the impact, he was thrown off the road into bushes where other vehicles/passengers couldn't take notice.
He would have been alive today, if we (the family) were informed immediately about the emergency.
That got me thinking is the phone really smart when it can't help us at the times when we need the most?
What it does
An app which aims to save lives by auto-alerting your loved ones during road emergencies.
Also prevents usage of mobile phones while riding by auto replying the caller about riding/driving status.
How I built it
During most of the road accidents, the person ends up with head injuries and is unconscious. So relying on any one touch would not serve the purpose because if the person could do a one touch, he could as well make a phone call.
Thats when I noticed in higher end cars, the air bags are automatically deployed thereby saving the passengers lives.
And fortunately the same sensors called accelerometers are present in a smartphone. Using these sensors the app is able to detect whether its a crash or just a normal drop.
This coupled with cell tower triangulation, I'm able to accurately deduce the location of the mishap & thereby immediately inform your loved ones who care the most for your life.
Challenges I ran into
We often turn off GPS and 3G data for issues related to battery drain & data charges, so any app would be incomplete if it relied on above parameters for location. To accurately deduce location when the internet is off. We used cell tower triangulation
Calibrating the accelerator meter sensors. Each phone had different values for 'g' (which is supposed to be 9.8) So we couldn't keep the crash cutoff static.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I was most touched when a parent shared the story of only if such apps existed prior; his son would have been alive & now he actively promotes the app wherever he goes.
When Commissioner of Bangalore Police officially launched it & Bangalore Traffic police endorsed it.
What I learned
To offset false positives if any was very important, as it sends a distress through the family.
We incorporated multiple layers to prevent FALSE POSITIVES
- An Alarm goes on for 20 seconds incase of an emergency - If the user doesn't snooze we assume he is unconscious and send the alert.
- Even in the SMS sent, we ask the family to call the person 1st incase he doesn't answer then there is likely a mishap.
And sometimes when you are riding and say your boss calls – All that you would want to do is pick the call just tell him that you will later as you are riding; But as any action with phone leads to distraction and could prove fatal.
How about an app which can deduce you are driving and automatically inform callers with an SMS.
Mishapp can do that for you, without any manual intervention.
What's next for Mishapp
Such an application can monitor over-speeding & can intimate family members of rash driving. Collaborate with the traffic department to penalise rash driving & over-speeding. Reward good driving behaviours in terms of lesser insurance premium with tieups with insurance companies. Tie up with Hospitals & Community good Samaritans for immediate road assistance, if the family seems to be very far off from the accident location.
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