Mercedes-Benz will soon use sensor and video data from the customer fleet to recognise different road users and traffic situations.
It claims its aim is to increase road safety for everyone in what it calls a further contribution on the road to ‘Vision Zero’ – the goal of zero road fatalities in the European Union by 2050.
Data will only be collected with the consent of the vehicle owner. The company says it will also provide transparent information about the procedure and the use and processing of the data.
"Our vision is clear: Road traffic must be safe for everyone. The prerequisite for this is high-quality data. That's because driving assistance systems and automated functions can only react reliably if they have been trained with realistic and diverse data,” board member for integrity, governance and sustainability at Mercedes-Benz, Renata Jungo Brüngger, said.
“In future, this will be based on data from customer vehicles. Our data protection standards are just as high as our safety standards. Our customers and all road users can rely on this. This is the basis for the acceptance of automated and connected driving."
Data diversity as the key to road safety
The increasing complexity of road traffic places high demands on assistance and automation functions in vehicles. The more realistically the systems are trained, the safer and more reliably they behave in everyday life. Until now, Mercedes-Benz has relied on data collected from test vehicles worldwide. In order to train automated systems to reliably recognise all types of road users and situations, a wide range of real-life traffic data is required.
The additional data from customer vehicles will enable the systems to react even better to uncommon groups of people such as children, pedestrians, cyclists and people with restricted mobility. The aim is to train the systems with the wide range of situations that they will encounter in the real world. Uncommon traffic situations, such as temporary traffic routing or pop-up cycle paths, or unusual behaviour on the part of road users are also included in the training data.
The variety of data from customer vehicles also helps to identify potential hazards in road traffic. This means that safety can be improved not only in the vehicle itself, but also through adapted traffic routing. The continuous knowledge gained from the customer fleet will flows into the driving assistance systems via software updates.
Focus on data protection
Mercedes-Benz attaches great importance to data protection and data security. The company says it follows the principles of "Privacy by Design" and "Privacy by Default": Data protection and IT security are already firmly anchored in product development.
The data from the customer vehicles is only stored temporarily based on location or events – for example during heavy braking manoeuvres – and then selectively transmitted to the Mercedes-Benz back end. There, the data is usually made anonymous and separated from the vehicle identification.
Mercedes-Benz customers will have the option to decide whether they wish to provide their vehicle data and can revoke this decision at any time.
Road users who have potentially been recorded by vehicles collecting image data can contact Mercedes-Benz, stating the time and place, and request that any recordings be deleted.
Digital trust as part of sustainable mobility
The mobility of the future will be characterised by digital technologies and services. Digital trust is an essential part of sustainable corporate governance at Mercedes-Benz. It says its aim is to build and further expand the trust of customers and other stakeholders, such as other road users, in Mercedes-Benz and in the responsible use of digital innovations.
The company claims it pursues an interdisciplinary approach to development. It says experts from the fields of development, law, ethics and compliance work closely together from the outset to determine its legal requirements and moral responsibilities.