LAS VEGAS — No one can bring back Dr. Rima Abbas, her husband Issam Abbas, or their children Ali, Isabella and Giselle, who died when a wrong-way driver crashed head-on into their SUV six years ago on their way home to Northville, Michigan.
Or Connecticut Rep. Quentin Williams, a Democrat just elected to a third term and hit by a wrong-way driver, while headed home from the governor’s inaugural ball in January 2023.
Or the family of four and a bride-to-be in a wrong-way driver collision in Fort Worth, Texas, in October 2024, when a car with two adults and two children slammed head-on into a pickup truck and burst into flames.
Or the Las Vegas Metropolitan police officer hit by a wrong-way driver two weeks before Christmas 2024 while driving home after his shift ended, leaving behind a wife and three children.
The goal is to prevent future such carnage.
A global company with new technology tested and used in Europe — warning wrong-way drivers as well as drivers in their path — is expanding access to drivers in the U.S. and Canada.
Bosch Mobility announced on Monday it’s working with SiriusXM Connect to bring wrong-way driver alerts into the new SiriusXM Connect mobile safety app, potentially reaching millions of new consumers.
The alert is made possible through the use of a cloud-based system, one that uses remote computer servers, to track vehicles as they approach highway entrance or exit ramps.
“Using anonymized data, the system can tell if a vehicle is moving in the permitted direction of travel,” Paul Thomas, president of Bosch Mobility, said in prepared remarks at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas.
If a car is moving the wrong way, a warning is issued to the driver, he said. “A warning can also be sent to other drivers, alerting them that an approaching vehicle is traveling the wrong direction.”
Wrong-way crashes led to an average of 500 fatalities between 2015-2018 and again in 2019-2020, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Since then, the numbers have steadily increased.
In 2022, wrong-way driving led to more than 700 fatalities — up almost 60% over a five-year period, according to the U.S. Highway Administration, Thomas said. “Here is an example where digital services can provide real value to help reduce these incidents.”
10 seconds to detect
While wrong-way driving crashes represent a small portion of freeway accidents, they are usually head-on or fixed-object collisions. Wrong-way crashes lead to more fatalities and injuries than other crash types, said a report authored by Raul Avelar, research scientist at Texas A&M Transportation Institute, dated March 2022.
Wrong-way drivers are often impaired by alcohol, involve drivers under age 25 and over age 70, and frequently at night when signs are more difficult to read and roads more challenging to navigate, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The Bosch wrong-way warning system issues an alert within 10 seconds of detecting a wrong-way driver, the company said.
“The more people that we can reach, then we all get more warnings and we all have more collective information about people — either that I’m going the wrong way or that someone is coming at me the wrong way,” Elizabeth Kao, Bosch Mobility product management director for the advanced driver-assistance system in North America, told me.
Kao, who lives in Northville, Michigan, noted the community impact of the death of the family of five from Northville. Her children were part of a public school community that mourned the loss.
Hundreds of alerts, zero crashes
“We can work with smartphone app providers and car companies to warn other people who are coming in your direction,” Kao said.
Sometimes people going the wrong way don’t know what’s happening or don’t know what to do, and drivers who see wrong-way drivers approaching freeze up and don’t know what to do, Kao said.
The Bosch technology has been in use in cars and apps in Europe and smartphone apps that use GPS technology in North America, and proven to be effective, she said.
“We know that it works because in 2022 we monitored 3 billion entrances onto highway intersections and we warned 600 people they were going in the wrong direction. We also warned 6,000 people that somebody’s headed in the wrong direction towards you,” Kao said. “Of those, we had zero crashes based on the people we warned. We believe it works.”
The 3 billion entrances were all in Europe, she said. Bosch also did testing with the California Department of Transportation and confirmed the algorithms were effective.
This technology — intended to supplement the physical installation of equipment such as poles, lights, batteries, cameras and hardware boxes with sensors along ramps to detect and warn drivers — is already available in the U.S. with the Sygic app, but consumer use is limited.
“This is the next phase,” Kao said. “We’re working together with SiriusXM Connect to potentially bring Bosch wrong-way driver alert into these SiriusXM Connect mobility safety apps. they have such big scale that means that millions of new drivers can access this technology. We’ve all heard of Sirius …”
Bosch emphasized that the technology is anonymous and only tracks vehicles inside a certain zone in exit and entrance ramps on the highway. The tech does not track where a driver is going or any other personal information, Kao said.
Michigan State Police Capt. Richard Arnold said in 2021 there's a need for the technology to battle the wrong-way driving epidemic.
"These crashes generally have devastating results when they occur,” he said.
After a Dallas-based AT&T executive died in a wrong-way crash in August 2022, the NBC affiliate from Dallas visited Michigan last year to do a story on the evolving Bosch technology.
“While Texas State Troopers raced to locate the car, the wrong-way driver barreled down the highway. Traffic cameras captured the final seconds before the vehicle slammed into another car head-on,” reported NBC 5 DFW.
Videos and records from the incident revealed the wrong-way driver was going in the wrong direction for about eights minutes before crashing, the TV station said.
The Bosch technology could have sent more than 40 alerts within that timeframe.
Talks with potential partners, including automakers, is ongoing, Bosch said.
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Always great writing from Phoebe. As a retired teacher and driving instructor this would save lives and perhaps lower insurance costs.
Hi, Phoebe. Nice work!