Derq uses AI outside of the car to increase driver, passenger and pedestrian safety

March 24, 2025 — DETROIT, MI — Self-driving vehicles seemed mired in the slow lane. Georges Aoude sought an alternate route for ensuring its widespread deployment.

He co-founded Derq in 2016, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff that takes the same underlying artificial intelligence found in autonomous vehicles and repurposes it in traffic infrastructure.

Saving lives requires “not just thinking about the vehicle,” said Aoude, the company’s CEO. “We can leverage all the assets that already exist in the traffic ecosystem today.”

Automotive News marks its 100th anniversary this year. As part of our centennial, we’re looking back on the persistent safety crisis that has played out on American roads. And we are examining the role new technologies might play in combating traffic deaths, which have climbed above 40,000 per year each of the last three years in the U.S. for which complete records are available.

Aboard vehicles, automated-driving technology has provided a “mixed bag” in terms of reducing fatalities, according to David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit that has evaluated automated-driving and other collision-avoidance technology over the past decade.

Derq believes it can more quickly reduce traffic crashes, particularly those involving pedestrians and other vulnerable road users, by using the same technology in traffic infrastructure.

Using AI to analyze information obtained from cameras and other sensors affixed to traffic lights, the company detects near misses and other risky traffic trends at specific intersections.

The company’s software can issue real-time warnings and insights on troublesome trends with city transportation departments or fleets equipped to receive the messages via cellular connections. That information can be shared on a heat map, and city employees can take corrective action, which might, for two examples, include banning right turns at red lights or rerouting traffic flows.

Near-miss metrics are accurate indicators of trouble

Near-miss metrics have long been desired and viewed as accurate predictors of where fatalities will occur. Until now, collecting data has been cumbersome, often involving monthslong studies of specific locations.

U.S. officials see promise in Derq. The company was the only private business named a first-tier winner of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Intersection Safety Challenge in January.

Safety advocates and government officials are hopeful that infrastructure-based tech from Derq and others represents a meaningful solution. The Intelligent Transportation Society of America, a Washington, D.C., group that champions new traffic technology, said combining physical and digital infrastructure holds broad potential to address road deaths.

“Technology is a key tool to solving our traffic safety crisis, and it is more apparent than ever that we need to prioritize investments in technology solutions, such as digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication and automation,” the organization said in a 2025 report.

On traffic signals, Derq software gets ‘to the root of the problem’

Understanding that potential took Aoude some time. He initially developed autonomous driving technology at MIT from 2007 to 2011. Then he considered adding the software to traffic infrastructure sensors to provide self-driving cars with beyond-line-of-sight information.

In 2016, Aoude realized it would take longer than industry experts had initially expected to bring self-driving vehicles to the market in meaningful numbers. He recalibrated and sought to deploy the technology toward a different application.

Now Derq “gets to the root cause of the problem,” he said, without needing vehicle upgrades.

Derq counts AT&T Ventures among its investors. The company’s technology is deployed on approximately 400 intersections in 25 cities throughout the U.S. and Dubai. The Michigan Department of Transportation was Derq’s first customer and its first deployment was in Detroit, where the company still has an office. Further growth is expected this year.