Traffic tech

Worldwide, about 1.35 million people a year are killed doing the same everyday activity, and up to 50 million more are seriously injured. That activity is driving. In many countries, road deaths had been falling for decades but suddenly started rising again during the pandemic. Rather than waiting until self-driving cars take the wheel, can AI make roads safer today?

In some ways, this is already happening. Intelligent speed assistance (ISA), in which AI manages a car's speed, has been required in new cars in the EU since 2022. But AI can do more. "We've got technology that can save lives," Mark Etzbach, from the Australian company Acusensus, told The New York Times.

Acusensus has developed smart cameras that combine high-resolution images with machine learning to spot dangerous behaviour inside vehicles — things a human observer couldn't see, such as if a driver is holding a phone below the dashboard. Big data will soon be used more often to police traffic, watching drivers to check that they are watching the road.