App keeps distracted pedestrians safe and is cost-effective, study shows

Greater than 7,000 pedestrians have been killed in the US due to crashes involving motor autos in 2020, which is about one loss of life each 75 minutes, in keeping with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. A part of this subject will be attributed to extreme smartphone-related distractions.

To mitigate these statistics on campus, researchers on the College of Alabama Birmingham developed a smartphone-based software, “StreetBit,” that makes use of Bluetooth beacon expertise to supply highway security to distracted pedestrians. StreetBit sends auditory and visible warnings to a distracted pedestrian’s smartphone as they strategy a avenue nook the place Bluetooth beacons are put in.

A brand new research co-written by 5 UAB researchers exhibits that the applying isn’t solely useful, but additionally cost-effective by offering a template of how current knowledge sources will be leveraged to do cost-benefit analyses for any interventions designed to boost pedestrian security.

“We hope the template developed on this research can facilitate large-scale implementation of any intervention designed to stop pedestrian fatalities and accidents by offering policymakers with info on the web advantages of the intervention,” mentioned Jillur Rahim, first writer of the research and statistician II within the College of Public Well being’s Division of Well being Coverage and Group. “The findings can result in important price financial savings for the states and, most significantly, save pedestrian lives by facilitating large-scale adoption of such packages.”

For this research, researchers analyzed pedestrian damage and loss of life charges, anticipated prices per damage, and prevalence of distracted strolling and estimated that StreetBit, or related interventions, can doubtlessly save between $18 million and $29 million yearly in Alabama alone. Even below probably the most conservative situation, StreetBit might yield an estimated internet annual good thing about $11.8 million for the state.

The research, “Price–profit evaluation of a distracted pedestrian intervention,” printed in Damage Prevention, is the primary U.S.-based research to exhibit how current knowledge will be leveraged to foretell the online financial advantages of distracted pedestrian intervention packages like StreetBit.