Oki Electric Industry has developed the first "Safety Mobile Phone" in the world. The concept is meant to help decrease the number of traffic accidents in which pedestrians are severely injured in most cases.

The phone is the only ultra small Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) phone model to have ever been launched. The "Safety Mobile Phone" is meant to provide a higher amount of safety for pedestrians in everyday traffic.

The phone concept works by notifying the vehicles in the surrounding area of its existence and then retrieving information from the vehicles nearby in order to alert its user. All that there is needed in order to make this system possible is to have as many cars as possible equipped with DSRC inter-vehicle communication solutions. Moreover, Japan is working on other new ways for reducing the number of people that are killed in traffic accidents.

"We plan to develop products in line with the New IT Reform Strategy and to work closely with car manufacturers to develop applications to improve safe driving and improve safety for pedestrians", said Masao Miyashita, President of Systems Solutions Company at Oki Electric Industry. The reason for choosing cellulars as the solution for making this concept possible is further explained by Masao Miyashita: "We focused our attention on leveraging mobile phones, since they are used by over 80% of the population in Japan. Our goal is to improve the safety of vulnerable road users including pedestrians and those on bicycles".

The Safety Mobile Phone interconnects the DSRC inter-vehicle communication function and the GPS location positioning function with the mobile phone's GSM function. That sounds quite complicated, but proves highly efficient. Pedestrians can create a DSRC wireless area of several hundred meters radius in order to send his location within the area at a regular amount of time.