Skip to main content

VTT launches AV for snow and ice conditions, Finland

Clearview Intelligence, Zeta Specialist Lighting and AEV have produced a solar-powered road stud designed to reduce night-time road accidents by improving guidance and hazard warnings to night-time drivers. Called SolarLite 2 (SL2), the stud is said to provide visibility of the road geometry up to 900m ahead - a 10 fold increase over reflective studs - and to decrease night-time accidents by over 70%. It uses solar-powered high intensity LEDs which do not rely on vehicle headlights to perform effectively.
February 22, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

Clearview Intelligence, Zeta Specialist Lighting and AEV have produced a solar-powered road stud designed to reduce night-time road accidents by improving guidance and hazard warnings to night-time drivers.

Called SolarLite 2 (SL2), the stud is said to  provide visibility of the road geometry up to 900m ahead - a 10 fold increase over reflective studs - and to decrease night-time accidents by over 70%. It uses solar-powered high intensity LEDs which do not rely on vehicle headlights to perform effectively.

The increased distance visibility allows drivers additional reaction time to respond to road layouts ahead. At a vehicle speed of 100km/h (62 mph), this can increase the time in which a driver has to react from 3.2 seconds to over 30 seconds.

SL2’s road studs use patented solar energy harvesting and storage electronics to power high-intensity LEDs. The robust housing of the embedded road stud has a profile of less than 4mm above the road surface, making them unobtrusive to road users, and able to withstand passing traffic and snowplough use. They will be available in spring 2018.

Related Content

  • ‘Risky tailgating and speeding rife on UK motorways’
    May 22, 2014
    Six in ten UK drivers own up to risky tailgating (57 per cent) and a similar proportion break the limit by 10mph or more (60 per cent) on motorways and 70mph dual carriageways, with men by far the worst offenders, a survey by Brake and insurance company Direct Line reveals. Almost all drivers say they worry about other drivers tailgating on motorways: 95 per cent are at least occasionally concerned about vehicles too close behind them; more than four in ten (44 per cent) are concerned every, or most, tim
  • Remote remedies help US authorities identify bridge deficiencies
    September 6, 2017
    Every day 185 million vehicles – cars, trucks, school buses, emergency response units - cross one or more of America’s 55,710 'structurally compromised' steel and concrete road bridges, the highest concentration of which are in Iowa (nearly 5,000), Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. Nearly 2,000 of these crossings are located on interstate highways, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association's recent analysis of the US Department of Transportation's 2016 National Bridge Inventory.
  • Cyclist safety system alerts HGV drivers
    February 17, 2015
    Developed by UK vehicle safety specialists Sentinel Systems, the Bike Hotspot is designed to reduce the number of accidents involving cyclists and commercial vehicles. The system is designed to sense when a cyclist is within the blind spot of a large vehicle, a common cause for fatal accidents especially when the vehicle is manoeuvring or turning left. It comprises four of Sentinel’s safety aids including a front corner system, side scan system, a side camera and an external sounder and can be customised to
  • Free-flow upgrade to Holland's Westerschelde tunnel's toll system
    February 1, 2012
    Unbroken service Technolution's Winifred Roggekamp and Dave Marples describe efforts to upgrade the Westerscheldetunnel's tolling system to give free-flow capability. Until 2003 the Flanders region of Zeeland, in the south-west of the Netherlands, was connected to the mainland only by ferry. The new Westerscheldetunnel, a 6.6km toll tunnel, improves communications with the region considerably, taking some 100km off the alternative road journey. In 2006 it was recognised that the toll plaza for the tunnel ne