Cosworth will be putting its connected and autonomous car expertise to ground breaking use as part of a consortium looking at improving safety on the roads.

Led by Applus IDIADA and also involving Cranfield University, Westfield Sports Cars, Secured by Design and the Transport Systems Catapult, the consortium has been awarded government funding towards the development and trial of technology that could radically reduce multi-car collisions on motorways.

The Multi-Car Collision Avoidance project (MuCCA) will use Artificial Intelligence and vehicle-to-vehicle communications to help cars and eventually autonomous vehicles make co-operative decisions to avoid a potential accident.

Our contribution will centre on the company’s data logging technology, whose foundations over three decades in motorsport have been more recently applied in the wider automotive industry.

“Cosworth is actively involved in the development of black box recorders for autonomous vehicles,” explains Head of Automotive Electronics, Pio Szyjanowicz. “We are proud to be a partner in the pioneering MuCCA project, which will use our data logging technology to help to improve safety and congestion on the roads, while acting as an independent bridge between the automotive and insurance industries.”

The funding is the result of a competition from Innovate UK, the government’s national innovation agency, and the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

Currently around 5,500 accidents happen per year on UK motorways, contributing to over 1,730 annual deaths and over 22,000 serious injuries on the roads. Incidents on the motorway network also cause delays and congestions, which can have a serious economic impact on UK businesses, costing around £21 billion a year according to recent estimates.

You can read more about MuCCA here.