A severe accident caused due to sudden obstruction on the road while driving back from Ooty triggered Tapan Kane to think about the road safety in India. He pondered upon the cause of the accident and realised that there are no accident prevention ways implemented in India. When he researched he found that there is a concept called Audi pre sense and Google cars which have radar system implemented in them to stop the car whenever an obstruction is detected. This helps prevents collision of the car thereby saving human life too. But these systems come at a very heavy price of around Rs. 7-8 lakhs and currently only the high-end cars have this system implemented in them. So Tapan thought why safety aspect is neglected in small cars and only people who can afford high-end cars are entitled for safety?
This thought process lead him to come up with an idea where the masses can avail the facility of driving safely. While working on this idea he thought that the hardware to build this system in India for small cars still costs around 10% of the total price of the car. So he had to come up with an innovative way to implement this idea. While navigating through GPS on his cellphone it strikes him that why not use mobile phones to implement this idea. So he designed a system like Drive Assist where the driver can get instruction on his mobile phone through the application installed. It is very handy as well as very cost effective.
He decided to implement this idea in a different way to pilot with. He realised that in India we have many toll system where the vehicles have to stop while speeding on a highway and this causes the driver to stop abruptly while on a drive. So he designed a virtual toll payment system which can directly deduct the payment from the user’s account. The driver does not have to stop at the toll gateway to make the payment. This system he claims works both online as well as offline through SMS. Virtual toll is a mobile application for payment of toll without stopping vehicle at toll plaza which will avoid traffic jams thus saving fuel as also leading to less emission thus saving the environment apart from ensuring that the toll collection operates on bare minimum infrastructure. He essentially wants to make our drive much safer with Drive Assist as also make the process of paying tolls smooth and hassle free.
In order to make this system live he is facing challenge to get government approvals. He has to go through all the approval process in the bureaucratic environment and facing challenges to get it approved. However, he has his idea patented and is not worried about getting it copied. We wish Tapan good luck to get his idea into the public soon so that we all can experience safer drive.
Celebrate Innovation 