Futurism.com, 6-1-2017 -- At Consensus 2017 on Monday, Toyota announced a plan to use blockchain to amass driving data that will help them development driverless cars. The move could also decrease insurance costs for drivers, as well as pave the way for new carpooling solutions. Chris Ballinger, chief officer of Strategic Innovation at Toyota, said in a statement from the company:

Hundreds of billions of miles of human driving data may be needed to develop safe and reliable autonomous vehicles…Blockchains and distributed ledgers may enable pooling data from vehicle owners, fleet managers, and manufacturers to shorten the time for reaching this goal, thereby bringing forward the safety, efficiency, and convenience benefits of autonomous driving technology.

Customers will have access to their own data, Toyota confirmed. If the information derived from sensors in a car is stored in a blockchain, customers will be able to give their insurance companies “increased transparency to reduce fraud, plus granting them access to driving data to measure safe driving habits,” Toyota wrote in the statement. Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, said in the statement that she was “excited Toyota is spearheading this initiative that uses blockchain technology to create an open platform where users can control their driving data.”

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