DriveSafe AI wins Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 25th District

When asked what inspired the creation of DriveSafe AI, the students said, “The idea stemmed from our own experiences. Being new drivers in Florida, we have been exposed to risky driving—people running through red lights at high speeds, texting while driving, or even falling asleep during long trips, especially during hectic drives to school. It is quite common for Florida to be ranked as one of the worst states in the US regarding reckless driving, and that fact resonated with us. While the trend is to make cars smarter, we still see the driver as the weakest link. So, we decided to do it in such a way that anyone could become a safer driver in a low-effort way.

“The instance of people using navigation or music apps and being distracted really opened up this project. As the leading cause of car crashes in the US is distracted driving, we thought of turning phones—the main culprit—into the solution.

“Our concept was straightforward: we wanted a device that makes driving safer and does not ask for the driver’s attention. The app gives intuitive, voice-controlled communication, including alerts such as ‘You appear tired,’ or ‘Please keep your eyes on the road.’ The goal was to design a system to act as a friendly co-pilot rather than a warning system that may annoy drivers.

“Another factor was the notion of utilizing AI for real-world safety. When equipped with technology like GPT-4 Vision, it opens the door for responsible use of computer vision without the need to use harmful or unethical data for training. It is even better that we can do it all on a web app or phone that drivers already have. Because there’s no extra hardware to buy or install, we get lower cost, less friction, and faster adoption.

What really kept us moving in the end was the idea that lives could be saved with such a simple idea. The idea of one crash being prevented or the case of a driver pulling over when tired because of our system would make all the time we spent really worth it. DriveSafe AI was just a competition project at first, but with a great potential: a way to use AI not for convenience or entertainment, but for safety.”