South Africa Develops Car Crash Emergency App

A South African company has developed a smartphone application that it hopes will help reduce car accident fatalities by detecting serious road accidents and sending the signal to emergency responders for immediate response, according to CNN.

The emergency app, CrashDetech, is designed to run silently in the background of your smartphone, where it can automatically detect serious car crashes. This feature helps emergency responders to pinpoint the crash location for evacuation.

“It also ensures appropriate medical attention by providing vital patient information. We’ll know when you need us,” CrashDetech claims.

Founder

CrashDetech is the brainchild of an award-winning South African entrepreneur Jaco Gerrits, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Dynamus Technologies – a technology company that has successfully developed numerous technology solutions.

Gerrits is a previous winner of the Top Information & Communication Technology Entrepreneur in Africa Award. He is also the chairman of Thembela – an initiative that seeks to provide solutions to socioeconomic challenges in Africa by implementing innovative technologies.

Speaking to CNN on Monday, Gerrits said road accidents are a major global public health problem, adding that this emergency app will help improve the response time and reduce road crash fatalities.

“We’ve recently concluded a licensing agreement which will see 500,000 subscribers being on-boarded over the next year,” the entrepreneur told CNN.

How Does It Work?

CrashDetech uses smart drive-detection technology to automatically monitor your movement. If it detect any serious car crash, the system then sends a signal to the nearest medical service provider on its list. According to Jaco, the app currently includes 113 different private emergency medical providers across South Africa.

“If you’ve got medical insurance, it normally has a relationship with one of the private companies. They’ll typically try and dispatch the company’s resources that they have a relationship with,” Jaco added.

The South African government says about 14,000 people die in road accidents every year, but private analysts dispute this figure, saying statistics from the morgues show a higher number ranging between 20,000 and 25,000.