New York.- In April 2017, a man was driving a stolen van in a busy shopping district in central Stockholm and crashed into a department store, killing four people and injuring 15 others.
The terrorist attack prompted the Swedish government to investigate how digital technology could be used to prevent such incidents in the future.
That kicked off a four-year research program to test a kind of geo-fence in urban environments.
Geo-fencing is a virtual tool in which software uses GPS or similar technology to generate pre-programmed or real-time action on vehicles to control their movements within a geographic area.
It can regulate the speed of a vehicle within that zone, determine if the vehicle belongs to that location, and automatically switch hybrid vehicles to electric mode.
Johannes Berg, senior adviser on digitization at the Swedish Transport Administration, said the technology can improve traffic safety and lower emissions.
It also has the potential to adjust speed based on road and weather conditions, and ensure compliance with regulations, such as stopping the vehicle if the driver is not allowed to enter a geo-fenced area.
In simple use — such as when a restricted map is downloaded to a vehicle before starting a trip to automatically slow down when it enters a low-speed zone — vehicles don’t need to be connected to an external source, Berg said.
Sweden currently has one of the lowest accident fatality rates in the world, and many cities globally have implemented that strategy.
Earlier this year, the US Department of Transportation officially adopted the strategy to fix a dramatic spike in the number of deaths in the United States.
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