QMIC Launches Salamtek Advanced Personal Solution to Tackle Distracted Driving- Rewards Offered for Safest Drivers
23 February 2015: Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) announced the official launch of its Salamtek™Advanced Personal Solution (for Android operating devices), for minimizing phone usage while driving. The Salamtek Advanced Personal Solution is one of the three main solution segments being developed by QMIC, as part of the Salamtek Initiative for managing distracted driving, with the enterprise and family solutions to be available in a few weeks. This Advanced version includes incentives for users in order to promote adoption and increase usage. For the initial 3 month rewarding period, rewards totaling about QR 30,000 in value will be offered by Salamtek consortium members to the ten highest ranked Salamtek users. This is the initial phase of a coordinated and evolving national campaign that will combine innovative solutions, incentive mechanisms, and gamification concepts to tackle the challenging distracted driving problem.
Salamtek is a dedicated national initiative and consortium focusing on developing, deploying, and promoting innovative solutions and applications in support of reducing Distracted Driving caused by the use of mobile phones while driving. The Salamtek national consortium which was formed in Nov. 2014 consists of a number of national entities that include: QMIC, the Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning (MMUP), Traffic Directorate of the Ministry of Interior (Muroor), Ooredoo Qatar, Qatar Insurance Company (QIC), QU’s Road Safety Studies Center (RSSC), and Vodafone Qatar.
Mr. Abdulaziz Al Khal, Chief Commercial Officer & Deputy CEO at QMIC said, “QMIC has worked persistently to deliver an advanced and a user friendly version of Salamtek Personal that can play a significant role in reducing phone usage while driving. We highly appreciate the effort of Salamtek consortium members who helped us in fine-tuning the solution, contributed rewards and incentives, and for playing a significant role in executing a national awareness campaign to promote the solution. The next three months will be an interesting learning experience that will assist QMIC in gathering user feedback in order to enhance the solution and fine-tune incentive models to keep increasing its usage and realizing its road-safety impact. This is only the first phase of an escalating national campaign and a coordinated innovations-driven strategy for introducing necessary solutions that address different user segments and use cases.”
The advanced Salamtek Personal solution (for Android phones) is available to the public, free of charge on Google Play. The solution will provide a safety-centric ranking of the participating users in Qatar with the highest ten ranked Salamtek users being eligible to receive awards at the end of the first 3 month period. The solution will continuously provide users with information about their ranking status. In addition to contributing to the important goal of enhancing road safety through reducing distracted driving, the Advanced Personal solution will offer users a chance to compete for a spot in the safest drivers list through a dynamic gamification concept.
About QMIC:
The Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC), located at the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), is the first independent regional innovations center that was created to leverage the use of emerging mobility technologies and lifestyle in developing and deploying intelligent solutions and smart applications for use in a number of markets including Transportation, Road Safety, Environment, and Smart City Platforms. QMIC was founded with the objective of filling the existing gap in the region for institutions focusing on applied research and solutions delivery with the aim of creating local knowledge-based ventures.
For further information please contact:
[email protected], +974 44592702