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.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • LiDAR sets its sights on future problems
    February 23, 2017
    AAdvances in LiDAR are helping transport authorities improve services and identify potential problem areas, as geospatial technology expert Dr Neil Slatcher explains. The effects of climate change on the transport infrastructure have long been a cause of concern within the transportation sector - and not only on the structures themselves but also on the surrounding areas. This year, those concerns have become reality with landslides, structural collapses and surfacing issues impacting services across the wo
  • Asking drivers what information they need: radical but effective
    March 19, 2014
    When Texas A&M Transportation Institute was asked to devise a temporary traveller information system for work zones, it started by asking drivers what they need. Robert Brydia explains the thinking, implementation and results. US Interstate 35 (I-35) runs roughly north–south originating in Laredo, Texas and ends 1,500 miles away in Duluth, Minnesota having passed through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa. Within Texas the I-35 splits into I-35E and I-35W passing through Dallas and Fort Worth respectiv
  • VRU safety report urges enforcement
    March 18, 2020
    Enforcement must be at the heart of a drive to reduce vulnerable road user deaths and injuries, says the latest report from the European Transport Safety Council. Its facts and figures give authorities the justification to invest more in camera technology and other ITS solutions
  • Cold, hard truths
    February 27, 2012
    By comparison with the snow paralysis which hit North America at the beginning of February, and the conditions endured by much of Northern Europe this last winter, it took only the lightest dusting of snow to bring the UK transport system slipping, sliding and then juddering to a halt in January.