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Seen At 11: 'Nexar' App Claims To Sense Danger On The Road

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- In the future, driverless cars could hold the promise of safer roads as they remove the potential failure of human judgement.

Until then, there's a new app that claims it can keep us safe by sensing danger on the road, and warning drivers.

It's simple. If a driver observes another driving erratically, they can tap their smartphone screen and the incident will be recorded.

As CBS2's Hazel Sanchez reported, an app called Nexar can be downloaded for free, and calculates when a potential crash may happen.

Sanchez took it our for a test drive with Ohad Snir from Nexar's New York office.

"It uses all of the phone's sensors, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to understand your surrounding, and identify the cars around you," Snir said.

The license plates of all the cars are recorded into the app's database. As users report incidents, license plates that have been reported in the past can show up as a potential hazard for the driver.

"On top of the screen we can see the license plates we saw along our ride," Snir explained.

The app can sense dangerous driving patterns of cars around you like hard breaking or sudden turns.

"Basically, it's supposed to be like a radar in order for it to understand when an accident is supposed to happen," Snir said.

Rory Carroll of Autoweek said the technology can be helpful, but it could also be a distraction.

"A lot of the accidents, and a lot of the bad driving is caused by people looking at their phone or not paying attention to the road ahead of them," he said. "I wonder if adding more interactions with the screen is the right answer."

Nexar does have a feature that turns off the screen while still recording, but data privacy attorney David Straite said there could be an even bigger issue.

"Many states are starting to outlaw automatic license plate reading," he explained.

Straite said a dozen states have passed the legislation already, and it's pending in New York.

"This will enable the creation of black lists, or scarlet letter next to someone's license plate," he said.

Driver beware -- there may be someone, or something watching you on the road.

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