BEIJING - Big data can help improve traffic safety and facilitate intelligent driving R&D and application, according to a senior manager with leading Chinese on-demand mobility platform DiDi Chuxing.

DiDi collects a lot of data on human driving behavior among existing drivers to improve safety and service quality, and also can help improve development of intelligent driving cars by monitoring and learning from how human drivers deal with emergency situations, Zhang Wensong, Senior Vice President with DiDi and chairman of the company's engineering committee, said at a forum on Thursday.

Zhang pointed out that development of the intelligent driving car is still in the early stages, but now people can use related technologies to improve driving safety, since the majority of road accidents are caused by human error.

Earlier in March, DiDi launched the world's first open-source self-driving competition with online computer science university Udacity to invite teams to create an Automated Safety and Awareness Processing Stack to improve general safety metrics for human and self-driving scenarios based on real data.

Compared with many other countries, traffic data in China is a larger and more complex pool, and data analysis of 20 million trips on DiDi per day will help use intelligent-driving cars more efficiently and reduce costs for drivers, he said.

"DiDi is actually a big data company and an artificial intelligence (AI) company. Data is the resource and AI is the tool to activate their power," Zhang said.

DiDi has signed strategic agreements with 11 Chinese cities, including Shenzhen and Shenyang, to improve traffic management systems with data-driven analysis and forecasting capabilities, such as creating smart traffic lights.