Skip to main content

SDR a vital tool in assessing speed concerns

UK company Traffic Technology has supplied Surrey County Council with its SDR (speed detection radar) above ground vehicle classifier as part of the Drive Smart campaign, a partnership initiative involving Surrey County Council and Surrey Police that targets anti-social driving. Speeding was highlighted as the issue of greatest concern to local residents so all eleven boroughs or districts in Surrey have been supplied with at least two SDRs.
March 23, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
UK company 561 Traffic Technology has supplied 4241 Surrey County Council with its SDR (speed detection radar) above ground vehicle classifier as part of the Drive Smart campaign, a partnership initiative involving Surrey County Council and Surrey Police that targets anti-social driving. Speeding was highlighted as the issue of greatest concern to local residents so all eleven boroughs or districts in Surrey have been supplied with at least two SDRs.

“The SDR is used as a vital tool to either prove or disprove a concern of speed,” said Michael Pritchard, casualty reduction officer for Spelthorne Borough. “Not only will it reveal if there is a speeding issue, but the data can be studied to discover the exact problem times, thus saving many hours at the side of the road and wasting time enforcing speed when there is merely a perceived problem.”

The Traffic Technology SDR uses the latest radar technology to accurately detect each vehicle passing the invisible sensor zone, and provides accurate count, classification and speed data for each direction of a bi-directional single carriageway. All the SDR units used by the county council have been upgraded with the latest Newcomm software which enables data to be downloaded via Bluetooth or GPRS to the online WebReporter software and output in a range of formats to suit their needs.

Data from the SDRs is shared with the council, which maintains a speed management plan for each area, and contains SDR data, both historic and current, for each road on the plan. These include roads where there is a history of fatal and serious injury accidents, roads where there are proven speed issues and roads where there is a pattern of damage only collisions. The data forms a valuable part of the plan especially when enforcement strategies are planned and permanent engineering measures are being considered.

“The SDR was designed to meet the need for accurate and reliable non-intrusive traffic monitoring,” says Richard Toomey, managing director of Traffic Technology. “As it needs no in road sensors, it is quick and easy to deploy for temporary speed monitoring applications.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Artificial intelligence changes Idemia’s image
    May 13, 2021
    Idemia pledges to make life safer for VRUs with new products based around existing technology, Jean-Paul Baldacci tells Adam Hill
  • TagMaster CityRadar cuts through clutter
    March 21, 2018
    Swedish company TagMaster has unveiled a new radar designed and optimised for smart city applications in traffic counting. Traditionally, it has been difficult for this type of radar to accurately track the number of pedestrians and cyclists because of the interference generated by passing vehicles. TagMaster’s CityRadar cuts through this interference, allowing the radar to count all three classes of traffic simultaneously in adjacent lanes – particularly useful in a city such as Amsterdam, with its huge
  • Manchester seeks smart but not selective transport solutions
    January 25, 2018
    Smarter transport relies on better communications both with travellers and between transport providers. Andrew Williams reports. Inrix’s prediction that the cost of traffic congestion will rise by 63% to £21bn per year by 2030 clearly illustrates that, in addition to the ongoing inconvenience and inefficiency, ongoing gridlock is a significant drain on the economy. It is against this backdrop that a Cisco-led consortium has launched CitySpire, a smart transport programme that uses location-based services a
  • Don’t forget security threat, says Econolite
    May 6, 2020
    A new level of communication is helping deliver on the promise of Vision Zero and a more sustainable future. But amid the promise, Econolite’s Sunny Chakravarty suggests we need to be mindful of the potential downsides in an age of mass connectivity