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

  • US transportation 'needs political leadership'
    November 9, 2012
    Long-time industry leader John Worthington reflects on where transportation in the US is heading – and where it should be going. Interview with Jason Barnes. The US’s new transportation bill reflects much of what is wrong in the sector in general and in ITS in particular, according to John Worthington. While a decision is welcome, he says, it does little more than provide certainty of funding for anything other than day-to-day operations. Worthington, former Chairman and CEO of TransCore, is back in the ITS
  • Asecap Days 2024: Getting used to the new normal
    August 27, 2024
    Asecap Days 2024 in Milan focused on environmental protection of road infrastructure, digital twin-based maintenance and monitoring of highways as well as the impact of electric vehicles, reports David Arminas
  • Cost benefit: Toronto retimings tame traffic trauma
    July 11, 2018
    Canada’s largest city reckons that it is saving its taxpayers’ money simply by altering the way traffic lights work. David Crawford reviews Toronto’s ambitious plans to ease congestion. Toronto, Canada’s largest metropolis (and the fourth largest in North America), has saved its residents CAN$53 (US$42.4) for every CAN$1 (US$0.80) spent over a 2012-2016 traffic signal retiming programme, according to figures released by its Transportation Services Division. The programme covered 1,275 signals (the city’s to
  • Safelane automates work zone perimeter guarding
    June 12, 2015
    The safety of workers during road closures and working alongside, or above, live lanes is becoming an automated process. Ten workers suffered major injuries while working on or near motorways and major A roads in England in 2013, and between 2009 and 2013 eight had been killed. It was against that background that the first commercial application Safelane, the automated traffic management system designed to detect work zone incursions, was carried out during the temporary closure of a motorway.