Agero has been providing roadside assistance and driver safety services for almost four decades. It has partnerships with giants like Ford, Toyota, and Progressive. The company is gearing up to launch its MileUp app for iOS and Android on January 18. Agero told us that drivers who download the app – which is still in beta stage – and share driving data would rack up points for every mile they drive. These points could be exchanged for gift cards to your favorite retailers such as Target, Amazon, and Nike.
MileUp could save thousands of lives
Why is Agero doing this? To reduce the death toll in road accidents. The US traffic deaths rose 8% in 2015, according to data from the National Safety Council. That’s the highest one-year percentage increase in almost 50 years. Agero believes that its app could save lives by automatically detecting when a driver has been in an accident, and contacting 911 if necessary.
Currently, it takes an average of 7 minutes in rural areas and 3 minutes in urban regions to notify the emergency medical services personnel. The MileUp app would reduce it to just 30 seconds. Agero’s Chief Product & Marketing Officer, Christina DeRosa believes that shaving minutes off the emergency response could save as many as 3,000 lives every year.
Agero needs 3 million miles of driving data
The company will use driver data to test its crash-detection algorithms. The company estimates that the MileUp app would need to collect at least 3 million miles of data to verify its crash-detection algorithms. Built on the Amazon Web Services (AWS), the mobile telematics platform can detect “severe crashes at scale for faster response.”
The company uses Amazon Pinpoint for MileUp’s user segmentation, campaign management, points management, and more. It hopes that the rewards program would encourage individual drivers to share data and help verify the MileUp app’s ability to determine when a crash has occurred. The company could then sell the offering to automakers that want to add it to their vehicles.
Agero has about 3,500 employees worldwide.
