The forgotten African patent that predicted today's smart car safety tech

Business Insider

3 days ago

In 2007, as the world braced for the smartphone revolution and electric vehicles remained a fringe idea, a little-known African innovator quietly filed a U.S. patent that would anticipate a global standard in vehicle safety.
The invention was a camera-based safety system for vehicles. It proposed recording footage before, during, and after a vehicle was in motion to deter theft, protect passengers, and offer real-time visual evidence in the event of an incident. The filing predated Tesla's Autopilot, BYD's fleet safety tools, and Uber's in-car camera systems.
What makes this story remarkable isn't just the concept, but who filed it.
At just 22 years old, Frederico Thoth Jorge de Miranda, a student from Angola, submitted a U.S. patent application—#US 11/710166. It was an ambitious proposal to use real-time, event-triggered cameras to build safer mobility systems. Though the application was never granted, rejected purely on procedural grounds, the application remains a public, documented signal of African ingenuity far ahead of its time.
What Miranda foresaw back in 2007, the world is witnessing now. In today's automotive and mobility industry, Miranda's concept is everywhere. From driver-monitoring systems in BMWs to dashcams in ride-hailing fleets, the integration of AI and visual technology has become essential to both security and insurance processes.
His patent included key elements that mirror modern standards: continuous video capture, automatic storage during events, and enhanced safety applications tied directly to vehicle activation.
Yet, Miranda is not a case extenuating circumstances, his story is not an isolated occurrence of African innovation being seen too late. Across the continent, innovators frequently create meaningful ideas that are never scaled, funded, or celebrated. Limited access to capital, infrastructure, and legal networks means many African-originated inventions remain on paper.
Other cases include the likes of William Kamkwamba from Malawi, who built a wind turbine from scrap as a teenager, or Samson Oghenevwakpo in Nigeria, whose hybrid engine technology never secured local investment despite international attention.
Innovation Without Infrastructure
What makes Miranda's concept, as well as, other African innovations unique is its origin point and infrastructure, or lack thereof. Even though his system was designed while studying in the United States, his background remained firmly rooted in Angola. His exposure to different driving risks in urban African settings helped shape and inspire the invention. This wasn't a Silicon Valley project, it was a lived solution to a real problem.
The patent offered an alternative path for Angola, one rooted not in resource extraction, but in technological contribution.
' I wasn't trying to be ahead of anything,' Miranda is quoted as saying in a brief 2024 discussion. ' I saw a risk, so I designed a tool. I never expected the world to move in that direction without me. '
Today, in 2025, Africa is home to the youngest population in the world. Yet innovation ecosystems, particularly for deep tech, remain underdeveloped. This means that all too often the 'results' are dismissed only for the ideas, just as with Mirand's, to surface years later on the global-scale, disconnected from their origin.
Miranda's 'Vehicle camera security system' patent application, now 18 years old, isn't just a historical anecdote. It's a wake-up call. His design is highly representative of, and aligned with what companies today are raising millions to implement. Yet, Miranda remains unknown, his work un-monetised, and his story untold. Until now that is.
As more global investors and R&D firms look to diversify and localise innovation, stories like this highlight the urgency of investing in systems that identify, support, and scale African talent. This must expand beyond the traditional Africa-attributed foreign and local investments in the creative arts or fintech sectors, they must manifest in engineering, design, and hard science as well.