Enforcement

The government of New Zealand aims to improve road safety in the country by installing more speed cameras nationwide. Currently, the ratio of speed cameras per 0.1 million people stands at 1.3 compared to 2.5 and 4.8 in the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria respectively. The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) is to be allocated US$8.05mn to increase the number of speed cameras from the existing 55 units to 100 or more by 2015.

Swedish authorities are to install a further 600 new speed cameras will in a bid to tackle a rising number of speeding offences. Ylva Berg, coordinator at the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket), said that while the rise in speeding has been just under 1 per cent it must still be tackled as a further rise would increase the number of traffic fatalities.

Dutch traffic enforcement equipment manufacturer, Gatso, is to expand its European operations into Germany. Gatso says it has established Gatso Deutschland in order to work more closely with customers in reaching the targets of ‘Vision Zero’, as adopted by the German Road Safety Council. Area sales manager, Dietmar Schwalm, says "Being closer to our German customers makes it possible to be more engaged which results in optimised products for this progressive market.”

A new average-speed camera, which can measure driving speeds over several kilometres, will be installed near Besançon. By late 2012, roughly 20 cameras will be installed in France. Similar systems exist in Italy, the UK and Netherlands. Over a stretch of two kilometres with a 70km/h speed limit, drivers are monitored twice. Some 13,000 to 15,000 vehicles use the portion of road near Besançon each day. During the test period, 40 speed infractions were recorded each day.

Safety Vision, a specialist in mobile video and fleet automation solutions, has announced the addition of exterior cameras for the Houston Independent School District’s (HISD) fleet of 989 school buses. The company’s RoadRecorder 6000 PRO mobile digital video recorder (MDVR) and four SV-830 dome interior cameras are currently outfitted on every vehicle in HISD’s fleet to monitor the interior, entrance door, and front driver views of the school buses. In an on-going effort to increase student safety on schoo

A series of controls to enforce drink driving and drug driving regulations across Europe saw police conduct more than 900,000 breath tests in a seven-day period, of which nearly 18,000 were positive. Motorists were also checked for drugs in the operation, organised by the European Traffic Police Network (TISPOL), between 4 and 10 June. In total, 928,863 drivers were controlled. There were 17,970 alcohol offences and 2,773 drug offences detected.

Frederick County, Maryland, has turned to Xerox and its CrossSafe programme to monitor children getting on and off of the buses and record drivers who pass illegally. The company will provide the technology, software and process the violations and maintain the programme under a five-year contract. The Frederick County Sheriff’s Office will review and verify all violations before they are issued.

SafeZone, Siemens’ approach to average speed enforcement, has been approved for deployment in the UK by the Home Office. SafeZone is a modular system which combines proven ANPR technology with advanced data processing and back-office systems. Using Siemens’ Sicore cameras, the system’s compact and unobtrusive design minimises impact on the street and each camera can monitor two lanes of traffic in both directions, dramatically reducing the cost of deployment and system complexity.

During a one week trial, Tussam, the bus services operator in Seville, Spain, issued 67 notices to cars parked in bus lanes, advising drivers that they are parked in lanes reserved for public transport, which includes taxis as well as buses. At present, the notices are just a warning but from 1 October 2012, Tussam will start fining cars €200 (US$246) and two points will be deducted from an offending driver’s licence. The aim of the enforcement campaign is to increase the average speed of buses in Seville

Jenoptik Traffic Solutions division is moving purposefully ahead with its business expansion in Asia by winning a technically highly challenging traffic safety project in Hong Kong and will be supplying over 30 installations, consisting of a mix of fixed, tunnel and mobile speed enforcement applications in the Tsing Ma and Tsing Sha Control Areas. An approval authority delegation from Hong Kong visited Jenoptik Robot in Germany to successfully perform a factory acceptance test. Close to 70 tests were perfor