With the ambition of providing increasingly relevant real-time information on road dangers to its community of 5 million members, COYOTE announced the deployment of its new “Level Crossing” alert, developed in partnership with SNCF Réseau. Following this summer’s launch of the “Highway Personnel” alert, developed in partnership with the French highway traffic authorities (Autoroutes Trafic), this new functionality is part of a development and innovation plan intended to improve driver safety and combat road dangers in collaboration with French transport and mobility institutions and road infrastructure managers.
A partnership in the service of safety
Every day 16 million vehicles drive though one of the 15,000 active level crossings in France. Despite the safety measures in place at level crossings and several awareness-raising campaigns, nearly one hundred collisions still take place each year at French level crossings. In 2019, those collisions claimed the lives of 20 people [1]. While there are many reasons behind the accidents, the vast majority are caused by the lack of vigilance and inappropriate behaviour of road users.
“Reducing the number of collisions is THE objective of SNCF Réseau and its partners. To achieve this goal, we have been implementing joint safety and prevention actions. Throughout the year, we meet with different members of the public, primarily road users but also young people, to make them aware of the safety rules to be observed around a level crossing.
The COYOTE “Level Crossing” alert is a vital additional tool for increasing drivers’ vigilance when approaching a level crossing, supplementing road signs on the ground and the vigilance required to comply with the highway code,” explains Alain Autruffe, Level Crossings Programme Director at SNCF Réseau.
Based on available SNCF Réseau open data and thanks to the work of COYOTE’s development teams, members of the COYOTE community can now receive an alert via the driver assistance connected services when approaching a level crossing, enabling them to anticipate these unique junctions between road and rail, and consequently drive more carefully and calmly.
Encourage caution when approaching level crossings
In concrete terms, members of the COYOTE community will firstly be able to see the location of level crossings on their connected device (COYOTE GPS or app) shown by an icon on the map. Then several hundred metres before the crossing, users receive a full-screen alert accompanied by an audible message: “Caution, level crossing!”. This alert is in addition to existing road signs and signals (signs, lights, bells, etc.) and aims to increase driver vigilance.
Additional information:
- SNCF Réseau has been an ILCAD partner (www.ilcad.org) since its inception in 2009.
- Level crossings in Belgium are also now located on WAZE and COYOTE (see eNews article on INFRABEL).
- Several other ILCAD partners are now working together with WAZE to provide the location of level crossings: Operation Lifesaver in USA and Canada, Infrabel in Belgium, SNCF Réseau in France and Israel Railways – with more to come.
Sources (in French only):
