Video: Phillip Hasted is creative director at Gooii
A Nottingham design company has created a new app to help prevent accidents and save the lives of drivers.
The app uses virtual reality technology and a headset that costs as little as one pound to buy to show drivers the consequences of dangerous driving.
Since its launch on March 8 the app has been downloaded over a thousand times.
Gooii, a design company on Castle Boulevard, has worked with the Safer Road Partnership, a joint force team of Warwickshire and West Mercia Police to make DriveVR.
Phillip Hasted, creative director at Gooii, said: “The app kind of works a bit like PlayStation 4 time travel games.
“Within the app you look at a social media timeline and then you can actually interact with that timeline and actually change events.
“Say you’ve just run someone over you see the ripple effects from that; you see whats happened to the families and other people involved in the accident.
“The whole point of the app is to stop accidents happening.”
The app also shows people how it affects their lives in the long term as well as the short term.
Mr Hasted said: “Most people are on mobile phones now and the app we’ve developed works with something called Google Cardboard.
“They are these really cheap headsets and you put your phone in it and you have then got a virtual reality headset straight away.
“What better way to actually make people feel they’re in someone else’s shoes than to actually put them in there.”
Nottingham’s Television Workshop provided some of the actors used in the app along with real police officers and an ambulance paramedic.
Nakita Hanson features in the app as one of the young people affected by dangerous driving.
She said: “When we first filmed I had only just passed my test and I was thinking this does happen.
“It was shocking and I think the way the app was put together it really comes across to young people and it’s relevant and current.
“A lot of the pictures we actually took ourselves and it just gave it more of a genuine feel.”
Initial funding was provided by a grant from the Road Safety Trust who were impressed with the detailed plan Gooii pitched.
Rob Gifford, chief executive, said: “We thought it was a really interesting, well constructed idea in an era where technology almost governs people’s lives.
“We know that young drivers continue to be a high risk group partly due to their inexperience and this is the new world (virtual reality) and this is what everyone talks about.
“It’s innovative so we decided to back it.”
