Publication

Abstract : Road traffic accidents demand immediate emergency response; in turn, most available vehicular telematics and safety solutions are tightly coupled with original equipment manufacturers and remain economically inaccessible to a large segment of vehicle owners. This paper proposes the design and implementation of an IoT-based Vehicle Telematics Control Unit integrated with a cloud backend to offer realtime accident detection, emergency alerting, and postincident evidence management. The system proposed here operates independently of vehicle make and model. This is enabled by using onboard inertial and force sensors that may detect accident events and classify their severity. Location information with high precision is provided by a GNSS module, while a vehicle-mounted camera serves as a sensor-triggered black box, capturing preand post-event visual evidence without taking part in event detection logic. Event data, such as sensor readings, GPS coordinates, timestamps, and footage recorded, will be securely sent to a centralized cloud dashboard for real-time monitoring, storage, and audit. Automated emergency alerts will be generated and forwarded to predefined contacts and authorities based on event severity. Experimental validation over real hardware demonstrates reliable event detection and timely alert delivery, and successful evidence aggregation at the cloud level. This paper proposes a low-cost, scalable, OEM-independent system for improving accident response and accountability while laying the building blocks for subsequent extensions related to intelligent analytics.