How IoT-enabled scooters, bikes, and cars are making streets safe

#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

The flurry of anti-dockless electric scooter headlines reached critical mass last summer. “This town seriously hates electric scooters,” screamed the link to a story focused on Santa Monica, Calif. “San Francisco Is Fighting the Scooter Trend With Poop and Vandalism,” blared another.

There’s even an Instagram account devoted to images of destroyed rideshare scooters. And, of course, “bike share” bashing is old news by now.

HARD FORK
Chalk it up to predictable, initial backlash to disruptive technologies. The ironic truth is that these nontraditional two-wheeled machines are redefining urban transportation and – along with ongoing innovations in autonomous vehicles and evolving connected-city technologies – will dramatically influence the re-engineering of city infrastructures to address such issues as traffic congestion, commuter safety, energy usage, and how to maneuver through the “last mile.”

New York’s Citi Bike makes its system data publicly available and invites developers, engineers, and statisticians to use it for analysis, development, and visualization. The more open we make these technologies and data, the more we’ll be able to make better decisions related to transportation and municipal infrastructures.

A new nationwide survey, “The Micromobility Revolution: The Introduction and Adoption of Electric Scooters in the United States,” found widespread support for dockless electric scooters.

The issue of safety is also something that a fully developed interconnected data grid can address. Salt Lake City, for example, reported a 161 percent increase in emergency room visits involving electric scooters over three months after the two-wheelers were introduced in June 2018. As scooters and bike shares become more widely adopted – as well as autonomous vehicles, which could be regulars on the streets within three years – city streets and traffic thoroughfares will have to be reimagined and redesigned to account for them.

A unified hybrid architecture is the best road to take
Obviously, all of the data racing across that grid will be useless unless it can be processed, accessed and analyzed to optimize user mobility. That’s why it’s so important to continue to develop the most effective and efficient ways to collect, store, access, process, and analyze the data.

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