Advanced Mobility Analytics Group
Preventing Road Accidents with Intelligent Predictive Analytics

Simon Washington, Managing Director and CEO

With an increasing array of road users—pedestrians, bicyclists, scooterists, e-bikers—it is evident that safety risks are increasing on our roads. For instance, in the year 2020, over 1.30 million lives were lost due to road traffic accidents globally. A significant portion were pedestrians aged between 5-29, cyclists, motorcyclists, and moped riders—commonly referred to as vulnerable road users (VRU). Despite a sustained and increasing focus on improving road safety of governments during the past 50 years, why do accidents continue to persist and sometimes climb? Why are we not making progress, despite recent investments and technological advances in vehicle design and traffic management?

This question keeps Simon Washington, CEO of AMAG, awake at night. He, like many others focused on road safety, are looking for innovative ways to tackle this significant societal problem, not to mention major economic burden. Understanding the status quo is complex and multifaceted. Vehicles have become much safer, giving rise to perception that they can be driven faster. They will alert us when trouble arises, and perhaps decrease our focus on the driving task due to a higher perceived sense of security. More people are driving, walking, and cycling on our roads. The world is becoming more urbanized, with an increasing number of intersections where about 50% of all crashes occur. Rural roads are relatively high-risk driving environments, with generally unforgiving roadside environments. Bicyclists and pedestrians are difficult to see at night without lights. Alcohol and drug impaired drivers and pedestrians are persistent. Road users are distracted by an increasing array of personal technologies. Aggressive enforcement is politically difficult, as is automated enforcement in many locations. Getting somewhere quickly is often foremost in a traveler’s mind. Clearly, the complexity of the current road safety context has outpaced the decades-old road safety analysis technologies the worlds’ traffic system managers have been using—leaving many in the profession frustrated.

If we are to break the current, unyielding trends, it is clear there is a dire and urgent need for an improved and more technologically enabled system, that affords an increased understanding of and insight into on-road risks and can help to avoid future accidents. Brisbane-based Advanced Mobility Analytics Group (AMAG) is a promising tech startup that is developing solutions dedicated to saving lives on our roads and improving traffic operations more generally.

to transform the way road safety is understood, AMAG leverages sophisticated video and Lidar analytics technologies, cloud and edge computing, vision engineering, artificial intelligence, and advanced econometric and statistical techniques to identify and diagnose safety concerns well before accidents occur—delivered through a Software-as-a-Service platform called SMART. “We are a company focused on social good. Our success directly translates to saving lives, preventing injuries, making transport systems more efficient, and making society more livable,” expresses Simon Washington, managing director and CEO of AMAG. The company helps governments overcome the challenges of legacy systems and methods for assessing and actioning road user safety improvements by delivering technology that identifies infrastructure and operational deficiencies before they contribute to serious crashes. AMAG’s SMART delivers solutions to local, regional, and state governments to better manage and operate transport systems for improved safety for all road users.

Upgrading Legacy Systems and Methods

The current international approach to quantifying and mitigating risks in traffic has been ethically flawed for decades; only after an accident occurs have authorities been justified to take action. AMAG transforms current international practice by implementing a proactive technological solution. “We exist because the currently available information about road user crash risk on transport networks is incomplete, contains errors, and typically lags months to years after a serious crash has occurred, preventing a detailed understanding of crash causes,” states passionate AMAG co-founder Tarek Sayed. A significant portion of road traffic accident information comes from police reports of the events, which are often incomplete due to a lack of eyewitnesses and video footage, among a slew of other discrepancies. This makes it difficult for authorities to piece together the incomplete data they receive and ultimately impairs their decision-making processes. AMAG addresses this gap by collecting automated, actionable road traffic data, including on-site video. With this information and its cutting-edge AI technologies, the company is now well-equipped to revolutionize the execution of road safety worldwide.

“AMAG has employed the best technologies, programmers, data scientists, and road safety engineers to build and deliver a product that captures more than 100 years of cumulative knowledge in road safety.

SMART currently contains two modules, one focused on road safety, the other focused on improving traffic operations while keeping an eye on safety. AMAG is currently developing two other modules that use LiDAR data, AI, and delivered via SaaS. “We collect video and LiDAR data from various sites and completely automate analytics processes using AI and advanced econometrics,” states Washington. These four modules offered via SMART will support safety, operations, signal optimization for safety, and infrastructure resilience for transport agencies. They will be supplemented later with additional modules for transport departments according to Washington.

AMAG’s Vision Going Forward: Delivering Smarter, Safer, and Better Managed Cities

While the current suite of products is generating lots of excitement among current customers, the vision going forward is perhaps even more compelling. “Our big vision is quite simple: to become a globally leading provider of predictive analytics for transport departments, designed by top experts in their respective fields, and top SaaS developers”. To executive on this vision, AMAG is partnering with some of the best engineering and technology partners globally, will build upon its internationally recognized talent to leverage its expertise across AI, econometrics, and transport—and will be hiring new talent.

AMAG is currently forming key partnerships to explore and expand its technology to include applications in pavements, travel time estimation, autonomous and connected vehicle technologies, road design, and public transport services, to name a few focused verticals. “Whilst our core technology and business model are developed with road safety foremost in our minds, it is applicable to a number of transport verticals—both within and outside of government,” says Washington.

Moving forward, the company is gearing up to extend its offerings to cities around the globe, starting with Australia, Canada, North America, and locations in Europe and Asia. And as the technology of connected devices continues to advance, especially in the field of connected and self-driving automobiles, AMAG is enthusiastic about the new levels of safety and efficiency it can bring to transport systems around the world. “In addition to assembling the most qualified team imaginable—we will succeed through key technology and engineering partnerships,” concludes Washington.