Waze Data Can Help Predict Car Crashes and Cut Response Time

Here’s the thing about car crashes: They are, blessedly, pretty rare. In the US, nine people are injured in motor vehicle crashes for every 100 million miles traveled in cars, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Here’s the thing about computer-based models: They’re not great at predicting rare events. “Accidents are going to be rare anyway, and models tend to miss rare events because they just don’t occur frequently enough,” says Tristan Glatard, an associate professor of computer science at Concordia University, where he’s working with colleagues to build models that might predict car crashes before they happen. “It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”

Some good things might happen if someone could find that needle, if they managed to transform streets and roads into streams of data, and predict what might happen there. Emergency responders might arrive at crashes a bit faster. Government officials might spot a problematic road—and fix it.