Public safety is a big concern. Especially for anyone traveling to a new city for the first time. Making the wrong turn down an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar city could result in a number of unnecessary and dangerous complications. Fortunately, I met co-founder Christopher Tosswill of DangerZone at Imagine RIT this past Saturday. And to be honest, without having investigated more thoroughly all of the startups we met that day, the DangerZone app is my current favorite.
Why do I like it so much? Simple. They are in the business of protecting innocent people. Think of all of your children, your mother, and your grandmother – yeah, now it seems more relevant and even pertinent. Take for example a city like Baltimore, MD. If you walk too far in the wrong direction outside of John Hopkin’s University where life is civil, you might end up with a concussed head or even worse be killed. I apologize, I don’t mean to sound so morose. However, this is the reality of the world we live in, so we must acknowledge it. Thankfully and soon, more smartphone users will have a level of intelligence they can rely on to help them remain safe while navigating in unfamiliar cities.
In their own words, “Everyone has been in a situation where they’ve felt like they need to look over their shoulder in a big city. Maybe you were driving through a strange section of town and rolled up your windows, or you tried to take a short cut down an alley and wound up in the wrong neighborhood. Danger Zone can answer the question at in the back of your mind, how safe am I?
Danger Zone is an iPhone and Android application providing up to date crime statistics for our users location. We give our customers an easy and proactive way to be safe while fully experiencing any metropolitan area in the United States. Danger Zone’s proprietary formula converts actual police statistics into an easy to understand danger index. These statistics are violent crimes against a person, including robbery, assault, rape, and murder. Our application’s simple interface illustrates the likelihood of danger in any given area with a both a percentage and a corresponding emotion shown with a caricature.”
Here is some more of what I learned so far about DangerZone. They are currently based out of Rochester, which is the first city on their list of cities to target for crime data reported by local police departments. The nice thing about all of this data, is according to Chris, roughly 85% of local police departments around the country use industry standard software for data entry. This makes growing the applications presence in new cities only a matter of obtaining and importing the new data set into their database.
I can’t wait for the day to publish a story about how the app saved someone’s life.
