XYO and Bulvrd: Paying You to Drive and Map Out Traffic Hazards!

Judging by where you live and how much driving plays a role in your life, you probably encounter at least one traffic hazard on your daily commute to work, leisurely Sunday drive, or even that dreaded trip to the doctor’s office.

Inevitably, your car is going to pass fender benders. Police roadblocks and sobriety checkpoints. Maybe even jack-knifed big rigs or herds of clueless, wandering cows.

Some of these things — the most basic traffic accidents — will show up in your garden-variety traffic or navigational app. But sometimes they won’t, which can mean an unexpected delay where you’re craning your neck out the window, gritting your teeth, and wondering why traffic is moving at a crawl.

You’re going to come across these things anyway. You might as well help out your fellow drivers by sharing your data, earning tokens at the same time, right?

Bulvrd, our newest partner, is building out a system that pays you in tokens to report traffic problems, detours and even just to drive. How it works is pretty simple.

• Pull out your phone
• Open the Bulvrd app
• Drive

When you come across these sorts of road blocks, the app will track them. When another person, also using the app, drives by, they’ll verify the traffic block or accident your own app reported.

If your information is accurate, you get paid in tokens. So, how much can you earn for a police checkpoint vs a pothole vs, say, a complete road closure thanks to two superheroes battling it out for control of the galaxy? Here’s a handy dandy list of rewards (minus superhero battles).

If you drive around and don’t come across anything eventful, you’ll still get paid — by the mile.

For many of the more popular navigation apps, crowdsourcing data is a huge part of what’s reported. Where you’re told to go depends heavily on reports by other drivers. But fake reports can be much more than just annoying, small potatoes-level incidents.

There have actually been cases where groups of neighbors, fed up with traffic in their neighborhoods, teamed up to file a number of fake reports — mainly roadblocks and detours in their own streets — just to prevent Waze and other apps from sending cars through their own enclaves.

This ongoing cold war continues in spurts, because there’s no truly airtight verification of these accidents and police hazards and detours. And all it takes is a few rambunctious people and a little bit of tenacity to turn a pack of cars into a tangled mess of traffic.

With Bulvrd, Augmented Reality, AI and machine learning are tools used to verify what’s being reported. The idea is to make turn-by-turn accuracy is the norm, not the exception.

Bulvrd wants to provide the most accurate, timely, navigational experience you could ever imagine. They want you to know what’s around every corner…and be rewarded for

We’re bringing the location data to the Bulvrd app, so this community mapping and routing system can verify exactly what’s happening on the road. Because drivers, just like you, deserve it.