The Challenge
Graz Linien — the public transport operator for Graz, Austria, running 170 buses and 85 trams — was documenting accidents the way most European transit operators still do: paper forms, manual data entry, stencil kits. A single accident case involved drivers, supervisors, insurers, and administrators exchanging paperwork across departments, with no central record and no ability to analyze patterns.
Up to 40 work-hours per case. No hotspot data. No audit trail.
The Deployment
Through an EIT Urban Mobility co-funded initiative running from August to November 2024, we deployed SmartDrive AI across a pilot fleet at Graz Linien:
- 27 drivers equipped with tablets and multilingual app access
- Real-time accident reporting with GPS tagging and photo uploads
- Integration of historical accident records, traffic data, and city geodata
- Browser-based accident management dashboard for operations teams, with claims tracking and insurer communications
The Results
The pilot delivered measurable outcomes within the first months of operation:
- 90% reduction in reporting time — drivers submitted detailed reports almost instantly versus the previous paper process
- 100% data integrity — all submitted reports successfully stored during the pilot phase
- 3 key accident patterns identified — validated through analysis of pilot and historical data by the operator's accident management team
One outcome from the analytics: a specific tree at a recurring location had been hit by buses seven times. With the hotspot data visible in the management dashboard, the operator could present the evidence to the city district and force a permanent fix — something impossible to prove with paper records alone.
What's Next
The Graz Linien deployment is now the reference case for SmartDrive AI's DACH expansion. REVG (Rhein-Erft Verkehrsbetriebe, NRW) has since deployed the system across 200 buses, and further operators across Germany and Austria are in active evaluation.
SmartDrive AI is backed by EIT Urban Mobility and co-funded by the European Union.
