Traffic accidents are a fact of life. While accidents are sometimes unavoidable, studies show
that the long response time required for emergency responders to arrive is a primary reason
behind increased fatalities in serious accidents. One way to reduce this response time is
to reduce the amount of time it takes to report an accident. Smartphones are ubiquitous
and with network connectivity are perfect devices to immediately inform relevant authorities
about the occurrence of an accident. This paper presents the development of a system
that uses smartphones to automatically detect and report car accidents in a timely manner.
Data is continuously collected from the smartphone’s accelerometer and analyzed using
Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and the Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to determine
the severity of the accident, reduce false positives and to notify first responders of the
accident location and owner’s medical information. In addition, accidents can be viewed
on the smartphone over the Internet offering instant and reliable access to the information
concerning the accident. By implementing this application and adding a notification
system, the response time required to notify emergency responders of traffic accidents
can potentially reduce the response time which may help in reducing fatalities.