Viziblezone Wants Cars to Spot Pedestrians By Tracking Their Smartphones

The solution being developed by Viziblezone, however, can. So say the people behind the initiative. And the kicker is that it doesn’t require any new hardware to do it—just your phone.

Viziblezone’s technology essentially aims to turn smartphones into beacons, transmitting the location of pedestrians directly to nearby vehicles and alerting their drivers if someone they can’t necessarily even see is, for example, about to step out onto the road and into the vehicle’s path…

The system uses the wifi antennae on your phone to transmit a signal that can be picked up by other devices running Viziblezone’s system as far as 180 meters (590 feet) away—almost a full block in most American cities. It’s also programmed to identify whether the user is driving a car, walking on foot, riding a bicycle, or using an electric scooter, and adapt accordingly.