State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Assigned Patent for Broadcasting Information Related to Hazards Impacting Vehicle Travel

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 14 -- State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance, Bloomington, Illinois, has been assigned a patent (9,842,496) developed by Gregory Hayward, Bloomington, Illinois, for "broadcasting information related to hazards impacting vehicle travel." The abstract states: "A system of broadcasting information related to hazards impacting vehicle travel may include a mobile device configured to: (1) mount within a vehicle dashboard cradle so that the mobile device is positioned to take images forward of a vehicle, (2) collect telematics data, with customer permission or affirmative consent, when the vehicle is moving, including GPS location, speed, heading, lane, braking, cornering, acceleration, and/or route data of the vehicle, (3) generate an alert based upon the telematics data and the images, and/or broadcast data including the images and the telematics data, and/or (4) broadcast the alert and/or the data collected to (a) a nearby vehicle(s) and/or (b) a smart infrastructure component(s) to facilitate warning of hazards upon the nearby vehicle(s) and/or the smart infrastructure component(s) receiving and processing the alert and/or the broadcasted data. Insurance discounts may be generated based upon the risk mitigation or prevention functionality."

The patent application was filed on Jan. 7, 2016 (14/990,228). The full-text of the patent can be found at http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=9,842,496.PN.&OS=PN/9,842,496&RS=PN/9,842,496

Written by Deviprasad Jena; edited by Sudarshan Harpal.