Irish anti-boy racer app wins prestigious Microsoft prize

An Irish app that aims to curb the influence of boy racers on the roads has beaten off 350,000 competitors to win a prestigious prize from software giants Microsoft.

A team of four from Sligo Institute of Technology won Microsoft’s Imagine Cup for developing an app which is able to track real-time driving and give valuable awards such as discounted insurance to those that are safest behind the wheel.

The app is being aimed at men in 18-24 age bracket, or ‘boy racers’, who are not only annoying to encounter because of their arrogance behind the wheel, but have been a scourge on Irish roads and the cause of many fatalities for years.

The app involves a device being plugged into a car's on-board computer system that then sends data over the mobile phone network back to the cloud.

The device is then able to evaluate drivers by matching the real-time journey to roadmaps coded on the basis of how safe or dangerous they are according to risks such as sharp corners, known blackspots, hills or narrow roads.

The team, known as Team Hermes, have worked with police forensics officers and have collected data from crash scenes to make their scoring system realistic.

Once the car is out of ignition, drivers will be able to access data which will tell them where they have scored well and scored poorly and will also be able to access a leaderboard to compete with their friends, which the developers hope will make safe driving more “fun”.

More practically, the app could enable young drivers to significantly lower their insurance costs as young drivers who are sensible behind the wheel are often affected by the reputation attached to male drivers in the 18-24 age bracket.

"The insurance companies are willing to provide lower premiums,” said team member James McNamara.

“At the moment someone of my age is looking at around €2,000 for insurance but if the insurance company knew they were driving safer this could come down significantly," said the masters research student. "If someone is really determined to drive badly, there is nothing we can about it."

Team Hermes are currently in search of funding to enable product testing and to allow them to perfect the product and are on the lookout for partners to get the product on the market.

And good luck to them. The more of those unsightly and cheap looking souped-up excuses for cars that are off the road, the better.