Skip to main content

Virtual speed camera helps slow down trucks outside schools

New Zealand company ERoad is helping transport operators reduce speeds in high-risk areas with its new virtual speed camera. Operators are now able to pinpoint areas of risk and apply their own speed limits to those areas for their drivers. They may be the same as the posted speed limit for the zone, or set lower to encourage extra vigilance around areas such as schools. Operators are able to use virtual speed cameras to monitor the speed of any of their vehicles that have ERoad hardware devices inst
March 4, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
New Zealand company 7641 EROAD is helping transport operators reduce speeds in high-risk areas with its new virtual speed camera.

Operators are now able to pinpoint areas of risk and apply their own speed limits to those areas for their drivers. They may be the same as the posted speed limit for the zone, or set lower to encourage extra vigilance around areas such as schools.

Operators are able to use virtual speed cameras to monitor the speed of any of their vehicles that have EROAD hardware devices installed. Virtual speed cameras are created in EROAD’s web application by drawing geofences around areas where speed is to be monitor. Operators can then monitor speeds in those zones on any web-enabled device. If a driver exceeds a speed limit, a notification is immediately emailed to their company via EROAD’s web application. Operators can also opt to monitor speed over time rather than via notifications, with over speed reports generated by the web application.

EROAD customers have been quick to introduce a new level of vigilance around high-risk areas, recording an average speed reduction of nine per cent in the speed zones they have created since the virtual speed camera was released in December.

While variable speed limits have been set on roads outside many schools, they apply at certain times of day only, and can be difficult to enforce. Schools in rural areas and small towns are more at risk, with drivers having less time to reduce speed from open road limits.

Gradon Conroy, managing director of Designwindows in Hokitika, saw a problem with schoolchildren wandering onto the town’s roads, and decided to take action.

"For the first few days of using the virtual speed camera, I was receiving speed alerts for 52-53km/hour. That's now dropped, so the drivers are certainly slowing down and keeping to the speed limit,” Conroy says.

Related Content

  • October 17, 2014
    Speed cameras - road safety benefits
    The 2014 speed camera review by the New South Wales Centre for Road Safety shows that speed cameras continue to deliver positive road safety benefits. A total of 95 fixed speed camera locations were reviewed, with 93 locations shown to be effective from the initial analysis. This positive result shows the review, now in its third year, has systematically identified ineffective fixed speed cameras for decommissioning. Overall at these fixed speed camera locations, there was a 42 per cent reduction in the
  • April 29, 2015
    Foundation funds research for informed campaigning
    ITS International talks to Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the transport research and lobbying organisation, the RAC Foundation. It is through the eyes of an economist that Professor Stephen Glaister, emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London and director of the RAC Foundation, views current and future transport problems. Having spent 30 years at the London School of Economics and another 10 at Imperial, the move to the RAC Foundation was a radical departure from
  • February 22, 2024
    Welsh default 20mph limit leads to 4mph drop in driver speed
    Transport for Wales' preliminary figures show average reduction in first three months
  • April 26, 2013
    ITS asset management matters
    Maintenance of on-road ITS kit needs to become more sophisticated; while new technologies can deliver better road maintenance. David Crawford investigates both sides of the issue "Good information is key to effective ITS asset maintenance,” says Ian Routledge of the Ian Routledge Consultancy (IRC), whose Imtrac (Information Management for TRAffic Control) system is poised for European expansion. Developed as an ‘intelligent filing cabinet’ for storing information about on-road equipment, the online database