Road Condition Detection and Crowdsourced Data Collection for Accident Prevention: A Deep Learning Approach

Abstract

Bangladesh is one of the countries struggling to prevent road accidents, which is a global cause for concern. An early warning system that indicates road conditions can contribute to the prevention task. For this purpose, a deep-learning based approach using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to learn from random road images the safety factor is developed. This results in a three-class categorization: (i) Severely risky roads, (ii) Mildly risky roads, and (iii) Normal roads. The application of deep learning techniques in this study yields an accuracy of 95.5% in detecting problematic road conditions. Furthermore, based on the study’s findings, a mobile application has been developed. The app enables real-time crowdsourced data collection of road conditions and provides a platform for users to share this information in real-time with other drivers, thereby, contributing to prevent accidents and raise awareness among drivers and users by pinpointing the location of the risky road. Finally, crowdsourced data has been reused to update the trained model, which further improves the classifier accuracy.