Real time traffic crash severity prediction tool

A method for predicting real time crash severity, comprising:

• receiving, at a user interface of a vehicle, a user destination;
• receiving, by a GPS unit of the vehicle, location coordinates of the vehicle;
• generating, by the GPS unit, a road map depicting roadways between a user start location and the user destination;
• transmitting, by a native crash severity computer application installed on a computing device of the vehicle, the location coordinates and the roadways to a cloud based crash severity prediction computer application;
• receiving, by the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, the location coordinates and the roadways;
• accessing, from a memory of the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, a set of vehicle display instructions and severity factors of the roadways;
• receiving, by the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, street light records for each of the roadways from a street light database, wherein the street light records indicate whether the street lights are lit or unlit;
• receiving, by the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, real time weather conditions, ambient light levels and real time road surface conditions at the location coordinates from a weather forecast database;
• calculating, by a central processing unit of the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, a light condition at the location coordinates based on the street light records and the ambient light levels;
• predicting, by a trained artificial neural network of the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, a crash severity level based on the real time weather conditions, the light condition, the road surface conditions, a day of the week, and the severity factors;
• calculating, by the central processing unit, a crash severity index (CSI) from the crash severity level;
• transmitting the crash severity index and the vehicle display instructions to the native crash severity computer application;
• and
• rendering the crash severity index for the location coordinates on a vehicle display.

A non-transitory computer readable medium having program instructions stored therein that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform a method for predicting real time crash severity, comprising:

• receiving, at a user interface of a vehicle, a user destination;
• receiving, by a GPS unit of the vehicle, location coordinates of the vehicle;
• generating, by the GPS unit, a road map depicting roadways between a user start location and the user destination;
• transmitting, by a native crash severity computer application stored in the program instructions of the vehicle, the location coordinates and the roadways to a cloud based crash severity prediction computer application;
• receiving, by the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, the location coordinates and the roadways;
• accessing, from a memory of the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, a set of vehicle display instructions and severity factors of the roadways;
• receiving, by the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, street light records for each of the roadways from a street light database, wherein the street light records indicate whether the street lights are lit or unlit;
• receiving, by the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, real time weather conditions including ambient light levels and real time road surface conditions at the location coordinates from a weather forecast database;
• calculating, by a central processing unit of the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, a light condition at the location coordinates based on the street light records and the ambient light levels;
• predicting, by a trained artificial neural network of the cloud based crash severity prediction computer application, a crash severity level based on the real time weather conditions, the light condition, the road surface conditions, a day of the week, and the severity factors;
• calculating, by the central processing unit, a crash severity index from the crash severity level;
• transmitting the crash severity index and the vehicle display instructions to the native crash severity computer application;
• receiving, by the native crash severity computer application, the crash severity index and the vehicle display instructions;
• and
• rendering the crash severity index for the location coordinates on a vehicle display.