The Mayday concept revolves around vehicles that are involved in accidents or breakdowns capturing their location using GPS and transmitting a call for help (together with the vehicle’s location) to the appropriate response team. This removes any reliance on the travelers to accurately describe their location after a traumatic accident.
 

Castle Rock has been involved in two major Field Operational Tests of Mayday systems. In the Colorado Mayday project, initiated in 1994, Castle Rock established the project vision, workplan and partners and supported the Colorado DOT in evaluating the project performance. Later, in 1995, Castle Rock worked with the Minnesota Department of Transportation to develop the concept of Mayday Plus, a second Field Operational Test, that went on to demonstrate Automated Collision Notification. Finally, Castle Rock assembled a working group called the Multi-jurisdictional Mayday Group in order to bring together all states with active Mayday projects or with an interest in Mayday products to collaborate and share results.
 

Most recently, Castle Rock has worked with Mn/DOT to develop a next generation Mayday project that goes a step beyond the Field Operational Tests and will deploy a full operational system that maintains sustainability by using commercial Mayday products and services. In this generation of Mayday, nearly 30,000 vehicles in Minnesota that currently subscribe to Mayday services will benefit because any emergency calls placed will be routed through the native 911 service. In addition, the vehicle location information will be inserted into the State-wide Condition Acquisition and Reporting System (CARS) for display before any of the nearly 400 registered users (State DOT and State Patrol dispatchers).

For more information on Mayday, please contact: