Announcing Nexar CityStream for Las Vegas

I have some exciting news to share from the Nexar team. Today, we’re announcing the first pilot for Nexar CityStream®, our smart cities data platform.

When a driver pairs a Nexar-powered smart dash cam with the Nexar app, they join Nexar’s network, where every vehicle is learning about what’s happening on the road ahead with the help of vehicles around it. Collisions, traffic, closed lanes, dangerous road conditions — it’s a virtuous cycle of information sharing.

Nexar CityStream takes anonymous, aggregated data from that network and shares it with cities, transit authorities, and mobility and mapping companies. The goal is to make roads safer and more efficient for drivers.

Las Vegas has thousands of new construction zones every year. That’s good news for the local economy, but terrible news for commuters. Nexar CityStream is using computer vision to automatically identify where and exactly when these construction zones are causing the most traffic. And, since December, we’ve been sharing this critical roadway intelligence in real time with The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (Nevada RTC).

This is an unprecedented data source that helps the Nevada RTC understand the effects road construction has on traffic, and take action to fix it. In other words, Nexar’s data is allowing the RTC to help residents avoid sitting in traffic.

Las Vegas is the first city in the nation to use a connected vehicle network to make its roadways more efficient. Today, Nevada RTC is announcing an extension of their pilot with us.

Nexar CityStream could help cities and towns all over the country. The possibilities for our technology go far beyond efficiency. The Nexar network can also make them much safer. We can spot areas where the most collisions occur — dangerous intersections, blind curves, stop signs that fell down and need to be replaced. I could go on.

I am particularly excited about Nexar CityStream because I believe it paves the way for a new approach to the challenge of using data for good while maintaining privacy. At Nexar we take privacy very seriously — both our users’ privacy, but also 3rd party privacy. The information that we share with our partners is all anonymized and aggregated, so that it cannot be re-identified. No one has access to a driver’s personal data except for the driver. We are proud to abide by the EU’s GDPR, to be able to provide all our users globally with strict data protection regardless of lesser local legal requirements. We have fully captured our privacy policy and published our data usage ethical pledge.

At the same time, we are very bullish about the use of data to protect drivers and make cities smarter. CityStream shows you can create a lot of value without sacrificing the privacy of users. I never thought I’d be so excited about orange cones.

I’ll check in again soon with more details on Nexar CityStream, and updates from the road…