Road Buddy mobile app plots safe routes to walk home The Road Buddy app, developed by east London-based firm Movement, checks publicly available police data on criminal damage, drugs offences, public disorder and violent crime, and then plots a route avoiding as many as possible on a Google Map. The app won its creator Hasan Haque, the Grand Prize at the 24-hour Yahoo! Hack Europe app development competition in London. Movement has previously worked with Cancer Research UK, Coca Cola and Samsung. Although the app currently works on the Firefox OS platform, which is in limited use, the developers plan to build a version for more popular platforms in the near future and release it later this year. No announcements have been made about how much they might charge. The app suggests a number of alternative routes to walk based on a user's current and final destination, in the hope of producing a safer journey to the intended destination. It also features an emergency trigger that enables users to alert a trusted friend should they get into trouble. Mr Haque, said the competition, which was attended by 230 people from 18 countries, was exhausting but he hoped that the result was "something that everyone could use." Kaustav Bhattacharya, head of technical delivery at Movement, claimed "Road Buddy has real potential because keeping safe while walking, especially late at night in urban areas, is something we all need." Anil Patel of Yahoo said "Road Buddy was a worthy winner."