Startup Addresses Pedestrian Safety

Obvio, a startup founded by a pair of ex-Motive employees, is taking on the growing problem of pedestrian deaths on U.S. streets with AI-equipped cameras at intersections to detect and report unsafe and illegal driving behavior.

Data from the Governors Highway Safety Assn. shows U.S. pedestrian fatalities have increased 48% over the past 10 years, even with dips in 2023 and 2024.

Ali Rehan and Dhruv Maheshwari founded Obvio after leaving Motive and have built out their tech enough to impress investors. Their startup just raised $22 million in a Series A round which was led by Bain Capital Ventures, joined by Khosla Ventures and Pathlight Ventures.

Obvio's core technology is built into solar-powered cameras mounted on pylons near street intersections. Making them obvious using bright colors is an intentional strategy to warn drivers of their presence and discourage bad driving behavior.

The AI software on the cameras is trained to spot the worst types of driving including non stops at stop signs, crosswalk violations, illegal turns, and unsafe lane changes. When these are detected, the system matches the vehicle's license plate to the state’s DMV database. 

Rehan and Maheshwari were spurred to start Obvio after seeing a lot of dashcam footage from truck-mounted cameras and noticing that many passenger vehicles had "awful drivers."

The company says all violations it records are verified by either Obvio staff or contractors before they are sent to law enforcement, which then has to review the infractions before issuing a citation.

Obvio is giving the tech to municipalities for free and takes a cut of the citation revenue. The split with governments will vary by state based on regulations.

Footage is captured by Obvio’s cameras locally and will only be sent off if there is a violation. It's typically deleted after 12 hours, the company said.