Highway accident automatic reporting app took first place overall.
Possible to commercialize by using sensor and GPS in smart phones.
Contribute to prompt accident response by automatic reporting and providing detailed location information during emergencies
[October 23, 2014]

YU Department of Information and Communication Engineering students who won the grand prize at the '3rd Traffic Data Utilization Contest'
(from left to right: Cheon Min-gyeong, Kim Jun-yeob, Park Su-bin, Kim Hee-soo, Lee Sang-hoon)

YU (President Noh Seok-kyun) students developed a smart phone app called 'Highway Accident Auto Reporting' and won the grand prize at the '3rd Traffic Data Utilization Contest'.

They are the LTE (Life Try Eternally) Team made up of Department of Information and Communication Engineering seniors Lee Sang-hoon (25), Cheon Min-gyeon (25) and Kim Hee-soo (23), and juniors Kim Jun-yeob (24) and Park Su-bin (23). They recently took first place at a contest supervised by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation (Minister Seo Seung-hwan) and hosted by the Korea Expressway Corporation (President Kim Hak-song).

The contest was held to find creative, yet practical ideas that can use traffic data possessed by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Korea Expressway Corporation. Participants selected the theme on their own using the 'expressway and national highway traffic data' and competed in a total of three sectors including smart phone app development. A total of 68 teams participated in this contest and starting with a briefing session on June 24, each team worked on their projects with expert mentors and finally submitted their works on September 30. Based on the submitted works, a total of 12 teams - four in each sector, gave their final presentations on the 14th. In result, the YU LTE Team took first place in all sectors, receiving the honors of the grand prize.

The LTE Team developed the smart phone app called 'Express Response' that can promptly take appropriate actions when emergency situations occur on the highway. The 'Express Response' app makes it possible for prompt accident cleanup or for other emergency situations on the highway by sending the information related to the accident to 119 or the Korea Expressway Corporation.

Team leader Lee Sang-hoon said, "When accidents occur on the expressway, when the person involved is unconscious or conscious but cannot state their exact location, causing delayed response, the possibility for bigger accidents such as secondary accidents rise. Thus, we developed the 'Express Response' app for prompt accident processing and response during emergencies where every second counts."

The main functions of the 'Express Response' app are accident response guides, expressway distance information (distance from expressway start point) query, and automatic reporting of emergency situation functions. In particular, the automatic reporting of emergency situation function gathered attention by using expressway distance data provided by the Korea Expressway Corporation based on sensors that measured the acceleration and rotation movement angle and the GPS inside of the smart phone. It is expected that by using functions that send vehicle and expressway distance information when there are car accidents, it will help with prompt accident handling.

Team member Cheon Min-gyeong said, "When the smart phone detects impact, an alarm goes off and a report button appears on the smart phone screen. The user can just click one time to send a message containing information on the accident to 119 or other institutes." She added, "If the smart phone is not touched for 20 seconds after the alarm goes off, a message is sent automatically to the relevant institutes as a double programming measure." She also stated, "Anyone can use the 'Accident Response' app immediately just by installing," and added, "I think we got good marks because it practical and there is a great deal of interest in safety accidents due to the recent sinking of the Sewol Ferry."