Rubenga Freddy designed the Motorate APP that may be instrumental in reducing road accidents
A Rwandan graduate from Ohio University in USA has developed a new application that will make it easy for traffic police to monitor drivers across all road networks.
“MotoRate” was developed by Rubenga Freddy, a Rwandan holding a Mechanical Engineering degree from Ohio University, US.
It is a free App available on App Store and Android. It helps passengers rate the service delivery of the car hence ensuring the safety of people.
“You can rate all vehicles that use the road as long as you have a smart phone and can be able to download this app for free,” he said. This App also has a website that can be consulted for those who do not have smart phones (http://www.motorate.net/).
All you have to do is to fill in the form including; car number plate, name an offense committed by a driver on board, or compliment his service before hitting the ‘Share’ button.
The sender will be anonymous but all driving rates on a particular car will be available to the public.
Once you insert the number plate, the car is rated in one of the three categories; Green which is safe zone, Yellow, meaning Attention and Red which is danger.
The crimes that are reported include; over speeding, driving while on phone, traffic lights violation, accident and many more.
“If people use this service, accidents will tremendously reduce as it will play a third party eye of Traffic Police,” Rubenga told KT Press.
“For example, if you are traveling to Musanze with X – Company, before boarding the bus, you can first check how it has been rated by people.”
Rubenga said the main idea of developing MotoRate App was to provide the best statistics on road safety as well as the status of registered vehicles.
“With the collection of this information, we will bring awareness of road safety, statistics necessary for implementation of consistent security policy.”
In the beginning, Rubenga is not targeting money from the App, however, using the App on several platforms will require application fees later on.
For the past two weeks when ‘‘Motorate’’ was launched, more than 50 people have used it.
Rwanda is coming up with different measures to prevent accidents mostly caused by reckless driving.
Speed governors were fitted in buses plying upcountry routes to control speed.
Rubenga Freddy(l) poses for a photo with his mother during a graduation ceremony
