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

  • February 2, 2012
    Making the case for ALPR in enforcement
    Federal Signal's Brian Shockley uses examples from around the world to make the case for the greater use of automatic license plate recognition technology in the US. It is time, he says, to consider the possibilities of a national network and the use of average speed enforcement
  • July 28, 2015
    Latest A9 speed camera report ‘shows improvement in driver behaviour’
    The latest performance data for A9 speed camera system has been published by Transport Scotland on behalf of the A9 Safety Group, covering the period May 2015 to July 2015 (incidents are quarter two April to June) as an overall assessment of the performance of the route. The report incorporates the first information in relation to collision and casualty figures covering the period from October 2014 to March 2015, which are reported against the average of the equivalent months in the preceding three year
  • October 22, 2014
    Bespoke ITS is helping to reduced collisions on America’s rural roads
    David Crawford cherrypicks conference and award highlights Almost 30% of all US citizens live in rural areas or very small communities, and 34 of the 50 states exceed this level in their own populations, with the proportions rising as high as 85%. And although rural routes carry only 35% of all traffic, the accidents that occur on them account for some 54% of all US road traffic accident deaths.
  • April 8, 2014
    UK defaults to hard shoulder running to expand motorway capacity
    Hard shoulder running has become the UK’s default response to increasing motorway capacity as Colin Sowman reports. Facing a predicted 46% increase in traffic levels by 2040 and the current economic recovery leading to more people travelling to, from and for work leaves the UK government under short- and long-term pressure to increase the capacity on the main motorway network. Particular sections of motorways are already experiencing repeated, sometimes tidal, congestion and both tight Treasury limits and t