Researchers from Cardiff University are developing a mobile app capable of getting pedestrians to their destination by way of the safest route possible.

A team composed of math and computer science experts has created a safety scoring system for just about any given location based on mathematical algorithms. The team envisions one day expanding these algorithms and incorporating them into a navigation app to help lower the number of fatal traffic events that take place each year.

Currently, apps like Google Maps only offer directions via the quickest possible routes with little concern for details such as pavement and road conditions along the way.

Yet, according to research published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, a system for scoring routes to destinations could possibly predict the number of road casualties likely to take place on those routes.

The predictions are based on factors such as the number and types of crossings, the type of street, speed limits and the likelihood of jaywalking.

So far, the system has been tested on a handful of U.K. cities where the system scored Liverpool as the area with the most dangerous roads while Bath scored as the location with the safest roads.

Lead author of the study Dr. Padraig Corcoran, from Cardiff University' School of Computer Science and Informatics, said: "Google Maps is used millions of times a day to get people from A to B, yet it completely overlooks the safety of the routes that it offers to pedestrians.

"Considering the large amount of deaths caused each year by road traffic crashes, we decided to devise a way of mapping how safe a particular road is by using a wide range of variables, such as the number of crossings and the speed limit of the road. We know that our safety ratings are accurate as they directly correlate with the number of road casualties in a given area.

"Our next aim is translate this research into a product that the public can use. We envisage something very similar to Google Maps in which a user can input their destination and then choose a route that utilizes our algorithm and gives them the safest possible journey instead of the quickest. This could definitely save lives and would go some way to reducing the high levels of causalities both here in the U.K. and across the world."