The Nevada Centre for Advanced Mobility (Nevada CAM) and tech firm Nexar have today announced a strategic partnership that will create the first statewide vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) network in the US.

Nexar connects cars in the world’s largest open vehicle-to-vehicle network. The collaboration is designed to enhance safety on Nevada’s roads and highways, spur economic development and job creation, and introduce a series of smart transportation systems. The latter will optimise infrastructure management, regional planning and inform policy throughout the state.

Nexar’s V2V network, that has shown 24 per cent reduction in collisions since its inception, uses smartphone dashcams and cellular technology to provide drivers real-time alerts to prevent vehicle, cyclist and pedestrian collisions. The network is well established in New York City, San Francisco and is building up in Las Vegas.

The partnership with Nevada will maximise the benefits of Nexar’s existing network by increasing the number of users on Nevada roads and providing the state live mapping capabilities through Nexar’s recently launched CityStream data platform.

Nevada CAM, established in 2016 by the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development, creates advanced mobility opportunities for visitors, residents and industry. "Leveraging the collective insight of government, academia, and private industry is the cornerstone of Nevada CAM’s mission," said Dan Langford, innovation director of Nevada CAM.

"The Nevada CAM-Nexar partnership represents an enormous opportunity to build upon those efforts so that Nevada - and ultimately other cities and states - can save lives and address key transportation issues through a cost-effective, market-based solution that benefits taxpayers."

Nevada CAM and Nexar’s collective goal is, by 2020, to generate data covering 250 million miles on a weekly basis. Throughout the partnership Nevada CAM and Nexar will continue to work together to identify additional opportunities with state, city and private vehicle fleets as well as consumers to expand the V2V network.

Nevada CAM and Nexar have outlined six key goals of the new partnership:

Increase vehicular and pedestrian safety on Nevada roadways: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) believes that the implementation of V2V networks can help reduce crashes, not including those involving drivers under the influence, by 79 percent. Cars in the network receive real-time warnings of dangerous situations happening in and beyond an individual driver’s line of sight.

Bring new jobs and business activity to Nevada: To support the statewide V2V network, Nexar expects to add more than a dozen new full-time jobs in Nevada as the network grows. Additionally, the establishment of the V2V network has the potential to support the growth of the transportation ecosystem and foster hundreds of additional jobs.

Introduce a series of smart state systems to support Nevada transportation policy, enforcement and infrastructure management: Nexar’s CityStream platform allows state and local transportation officials access to previously unavailable real-time, anonymous data related to roadway use, traffic patterns and compliance, and transportation infrastructure.

The data has the ability to help local governments improve safety, efficiency and system performance, and reduce CO2 emissions by identifying impediments to traffic flow, managing road infrastructure, identifying "hot spots" (where accidents are likely to happen), and generally informing a holistic road management policy (including pedestrian traffic and safety).

Offer enhanced fleet management capabilities to state and local governments: Nexar’s next-generation telematics allow state and local fleet managers to access live fleet mapping, driver scoring, advanced collision reporting and reconstruction, and hazard detection/automatic vehicle re-routing.

Accelerate the adoption of autonomous vehicles: V2V is a critical safety feature which extends the line-of-sight and allows for communication between human drivers and autonomous vehicles. Nexar’s V2V network will accelerate Nevada’s move to autonomous driving by utilising the first ever live V2V (and V2X) network.

Collaborate on smart transportation research projects with Nevada Research Institutes: Utilise the data set generated by Nexar to understand road velocities, traffic blockers, evaluate human braking effectiveness, and generally inform a holistic road management policy (including pedestrian traffic and safety).

Nexar will immediately begin focusing on local hiring, and Nevada CAM-Nexar will collaborate on determining priority areas for deployment of the network in the state. Visitors and residents of Nevada interested in making our roads safer and more efficient are encouraged to download the free Nexar app from Google Play or Apple App stores.

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