HAAS Alert, a SaaS company that provides real-time automotive collision prevention for public safety and roadway fleets, has raised $5 million in seed funding, which it plans to use to expand sales and outreach efforts, as well as prioritize R&D with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) technology partnerships.
HAAS Inform uses cellular-based sensors to collect data from the surroundings around a vehicle and uses predictive technology to digitally alert drivers through their car systems. Safety Cloud, HAAS Alert’s unique digital alerting system, can be found on a variety of public and private fleet vehicles, including fire engines, ambulances, and police vehicles, as well as tow trucks, construction, and garbage vehicles, school buses, and more. According to HAAS Alert, at least eight car manufacturers have Safety Cloud preloaded on their fleet vehicles.
Jeremy Agulnek, HAAS Alert’s senior vice president of the connected vehicle, told TechCrunch, “Emergency responders, towing operators, construction and work zone teams, and comparable municipal fleets have exceptionally high mortality and injury rates from incidents.” “They are also the backbone of our towns, and every driver comes through them on a daily basis. Even though many of these vocations are intrinsically dangerous, to begin with, struck-by accidents remain the primary cause of death for all of them.”
Because HAAS Alert sees advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and V2X as the solution, it designed its service to start with the most vulnerable people on our roads and expand from there.
“This isn’t about using connected vehicles for entertainment or general connectivity for us — it’s about safety,” Agulnek said. “By connecting and protecting these individuals, we can provide a linked car experience to all drivers and infrastructure while also making communities safer. We believe that working with first responders and road workers to improve safety is the most important aspect of moving mobility forward.”
So far, Safety Cloud has been installed on cars in over 750 public and private companies, which have combined delivered over 1 billion alarms.
HAAS Alert is one of a rising number of firms that are attempting to use V2X technology to lower the danger of crashes and funding is a critical component. Not only does it take money to develop and maintain software, but the hardware and human resources required to put sensors, both on public infrastructure and in vehicles, are also costly. By 2022, HAAS Alert intends to have sent out 10 billion driver safety alerts, and in order to do so, it will need to entice the automobile industry. The company currently works mostly with fleets, but it claims that the more fleets on its platform, the more car customers it will attract, and vice versa.
