Road frustration index risk mapping and mitigation

• US 9,739,627 B1
• Filed: 10/18/2016
• Issued: 08/22/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Allstate Insurance Company (Allstate Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Allstate Insurance Company (Allstate Corporation)
• Inventors: Chintakindi, Sunil
• Primary Examiner(s): Elchanti, Hussein A
• Application Number:
  US15/296,915
• Time in Patent Office: 308 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3461 Preferred or disfavoured areas, e.g. dangerous zones, toll or emission zones, intersections, manoeuvre types, segments such as motorways, toll roads, ferries
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3484 Personalized, e.g. from learned user behaviour or user-defined profiles
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3691 Retrieval, searching and output of information related to real-time traffic, weather, or environmental conditions arrangements for giving variable traffic instructions G08G1/09

Abstract

A system for determining a road frustration index value may include a vehicle and/or a computing device associated with a user travelling within the vehicle. A telematics system associated with the vehicle may include a sensor to sense a speed of the vehicle. The computing device may receive, from the vehicle telematics device, speed information representative of a current vehicle speed and may receive, from a mobile location detection unit, information identifying a road class associated with each of a plurality of road segments of a route. The computing device may then calculate, in near real-time and based on the speed information and the road class, a first frustration level value associated with the driver of the vehicle and identify, based on whether the first frustration level value meets a criterion, an alternate route segment having second frustration level value predicted to be less than the first frustration level value.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a vehicle telematics system comprising a sensor sensing a speed of a vehicle;

a computing device comprising;

a processor; and

a non-transitory memory device storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the computing device to;

receive, from the vehicle telematics system, speed information representative of a current vehicle speed;

receive, from a mobile location detection unit, information identifying a road class associated with each of a plurality of road segments upon which the vehicle is travelling;

calculate, in near real-time and based on the speed information and the road class, a first frustration level value associated with a driver of the vehicle;

identify, based on whether the first frustration level value meets a criterion, an alternate route segment having second frustration level value predicted to be less than the first frustration level value; and

output, on a display, a visual representation of a first route segment associated with the first frustration level value and the alternate route segment associated with the second frustration level value.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the location detection unit is one of a mobile location tracking device and a global positioning satellite unit.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the location detection unit is one of a smartphone, a wrist-mounted computing device, or a mobile computer device.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor, further cause the computing device to:

identify at least two or more alternate route segments having a frustration level less than the first frustration level value; and

communicate, to the driver, at least one of the two or more alternate route segments.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the road class corresponds to a residential road class.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the road class corresponds to a non-arterial road class.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the road class of a first road segment of the plurality of road segments is a non-arterial road class and a second segment of the plurality of road segments comprises a residential road class.

8. A computing device comprising:

a processor; and

a non-transitory memory device storing instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the computing device to;

receive, from a vehicle telematics device, speed information representative of a current vehicle speed;

receive, from a mobile location detection unit, information identifying a road class associated with each of a plurality of road segments upon which the vehicle is travelling;

calculate, in near real-time and based on the speed information and the road class, a first frustration level value associated with a driver of the vehicle; and

identify, based on whether the first frustration level value meets a criterion, an alternate route segment having second frustration level value predicted to be less than the first frustration level value;

generate, a frustration index level map displaying a first route segment associated with the first frustration level value and the alternate route segment having the second frustration level value; and

display, on a display device, the frustration index level map to a user.

9. The computing device of claim 8, wherein the non-transitory memory device stores instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the computing device to:

receive, from a user, a start location and an end location of a travel route;

calculate, based on historical traffic information and road type information, a plurality of routes between the start location and the end location, wherein each of the plurality of routes includes two or more route segments; and

calculate, based on a road frustration index model, a road frustration index value for each route of the plurality of routes; and

communicate, to a user, an indication of at least one of the plurality of routes and an indication of an associated road frustration index value.

10. The computing device of claim 9, wherein the non-transitory memory device stores instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the computing device to:

calculate, based upon a road type classification, a road frustration index for each of the two or more road segments of each of the plurality of routes, wherein the road frustration index value of each of the plurality of travel routes is calculated based on the road frustration index value of the two or more route segment associated with each travel route.

11. The computing device of claim 8, wherein the road type corresponds to a residential road class.

12. The computing device of claim 8, wherein the road type corresponds to a non-arterial road class.

13. The computing device of claim 8, wherein the road type of a first road segment of the plurality of road segments is a non-arterial road class and the road type classification of a second segment of the plurality of road segments is a residential road class.

14. The computing device of claim 8, wherein the non-transitory memory device stores instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the computing device to:

communicate, via a wireless communication link, the first frustration level value and the second frustration level value to a route risk mitigation computing system; and

receive, via the wireless communication link, an indication of a location of one or more risks along each of the plurality of road segments upon which the vehicle is travelling; and

display, to a user, an indication of each of the one or more risks along each of the plurality of road segments upon which the vehicle is travelling.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein at least one of the risks displayed to the user comprises an indication of a predicted road frustration index value corresponding to an associated route segment.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein at least one of the risks displayed to the user comprises an indication of a predicted objective risk or a predicted subjective risk corresponding to an associated route segment.