Design of Low Cost Versatile Microcontroller Based System Using Cell Phone for Accident Detection and Prevention

India holds an unenviable record of having highest number of road accidents every year. The road accidents involve high human suffering in terms of untimely deaths, injuries and loss of income to the affected families apart from heavy financial losses to insurance companies. A low-cost micro controller based system with 3-axis accelerometer sensor and discarded cell phone model is developed to provide warnings to driver for abnormal conditions or unsafe driving and capability to detect accidents. The system has versatile features like alerting the driver about servicing schedule, abnormal engine temperature, over-speeding and rash driving situations. It also incorporates facility to capture images and send multimedia and text messages to predetermined users immediately after occurrence of accident. The usage of old cell phone model drastically reduces cost of the system apart from preventing environmental hazards due to unsafe dumping of old cell phones. The installation of proposed system in existing vehicles has tremendous potential to reduce fatalities during road accidents due to its warning alerts to driver and immediate communication to dear ones and emergency help lines after the occurrence of accident.