Across the United States, aging infrastructure and deteriorating roads are creating serious safety hazards for drivers. With traditional inspection methods proving inadequate, cities and states are now turning to artificial intelligence as their secret weapon to identify dangerous road conditions and prioritize critical repairs.
Hawaii's Ambitious Dashcam Initiative
Hawaii is taking dramatic action to combat a worrying spike in traffic fatalities. State officials are distributing 1,000 free dashboard cameras to drivers as part of their "Eyes on the Road" campaign. These aren't ordinary dashcams - they're equipped with sophisticated AI technology that automatically inspects guardrails, road signs, and pavement markings while vehicles are in motion.
"This is not something where it's looked at once a month and then they sit down and figure out where they're going to put their vans," explained Richard Browning, chief commercial officer at Nextbase, the company that developed the dashcams and imagery platform for Hawaii.
The AI system can instantly distinguish between minor issues and emergency situations that require immediate attention from maintenance crews. This real-time monitoring represents a significant upgrade from traditional, periodic inspections.
Addressing Unique Island Challenges
Roger Chen, a University of Hawaii associate professor of engineering who's helping facilitate the program, highlighted the unique challenges Hawaii faces in maintaining its outdated roadway infrastructure. "Equipment has to be shipped to the island," Chen noted. "There's a space constraint and a topography constraint they have to deal with, so it's not an easy problem."
The urgency of Hawaii's situation became tragically clear when the state reached a $3.9 million settlement with the family of a driver killed in 2020 after hitting a guardrail that had been damaged in a crash 18 months earlier but never repaired. The state recorded its 106th traffic fatality of 2025 in October - already surpassing the entire death toll of 2024.
Proven Success in San Jose and Beyond
Other regions are reporting impressive results from their AI road monitoring programs. In San Jose, California, city officials mounted cameras on street sweepers and discovered the system correctly identified potholes 97% of the time. The success has prompted them to expand the program to parking enforcement vehicles.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a Democrat with tech startup experience, emphasized the power of shared data. "It sees, 'Oh, that actually is a cardboard box wedged between those two parked vehicles, and that counts as debris on a roadway,'" Mahan explained. "We could wait five years for that to happen here, or maybe we have it at our fingertips."
The city helped establish the GovAI Coalition in March 2024, creating a platform for governments to share best practices and eventually data. Other members include local governments in California, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and the state of Colorado.
Beyond Cameras: Smartphone Data Solutions
Not all AI road safety approaches rely on cameras. Massachusetts-based Cambridge Mobile Telematics has developed StreetVision, a system that uses cellphone data to identify risky driving behavior and problematic road conditions.
Ryan McMahon, the company's senior vice president, shared a telling example from a conference in Washington, D.C. His StreetVision software detected numerous vehicles braking aggressively on a nearby road. The cause? A bush was obstructing a stop sign, forcing drivers to react at the last second.
"What we're looking at is the accumulation of events," McMahon said. "That brought me to an infrastructure problem, and the solution to the infrastructure problem was a pair of garden shears."
Texas Tackles Massive Infrastructure
Texas, which has more roadway lane miles than the next two states combined, is less than a year into a massive AI plan using both cameras and enrolled drivers' cellphone data. Officials recently used AI tools to scan 250,000 lane miles (402,000 kilometers) to identify old street signs long overdue for replacement.
Jim Markham, who deals with crash data for the Texas Department of Transportation, highlighted the efficiency gains. "If something was installed 10 or 15 years ago and the work order was on paper, God help you trying to find that in the digits somewhere," Markham said. "Having AI that can go through and screen for that is a force multiplier that basically allows us to look wider and further much faster than we could just driving stuff around."
The Future: Preparing for Autonomous Vehicles
Experts believe current AI road safety initiatives are just stepping stones toward a future dominated by autonomous vehicles. Mark Pittman, CEO of Blyncsy who has worked on the Hawaii dashcam program, predicts that within eight years, almost every new vehicle - with or without a driver - will come equipped with cameras.
"How do we see our roadways today from the perspective of grandma in a Buick but also Elon and his Tesla?" Pittman asked. "This is really important nuance for departments of transportation and city agencies. They're now building infrastructure for humans and automated drivers alike, and they need to start bridging that divide."
As America's infrastructure challenges continue to grow, artificial intelligence is emerging as a critical tool in the race to make roads safer for all users - whether human drivers or the autonomous vehicles of tomorrow.
