Skip to main content

DfT to conduct UK road markings health check

The UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded £2 million to develop a national health-check of road markings. The DfT is to analyse nearly 10,000 miles of road with the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) to understand where investment is needed. The council will use Gaist’s machine learning artificial intelligence technology to review close to 150 million high definition images. Stu McInroy, chief executive of the Road Safety Markings Association, believes the study will provide “ha
August 1, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

The UK’s 1837 Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded £2 million to develop a national health-check of road markings.  

The DfT is to analyse nearly 10,000 miles of road with the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) to understand where investment is needed. The council will use Gaist’s machine learning artificial intelligence technology to review close to 150 million high definition images.

Stu McInroy, chief executive of the Road Safety Markings Association, believes the study will provide “hard evidence” of the decline in road markings and the associated increase in road safety risk to the public.

“Government must stand ready to act on the findings of the LCRIG/Gaist study and provide to local authorities sufficient ring-fenced funding to reverse the decline in road markings so evident to the public,” he continues. “There will also be an obligation upon local authorities to make decisions not on the basis of cost, which usually means cheapest, but on obtaining the best value for money solutions for the tax payer.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • UK motorists ‘relax attitudes’ on distracted driving
    September 15, 2016
    Research for the RAC’s Report on Motoring 2016 has revealed that for some, attitudes towards handheld mobile use have worryingly relaxed over the last two years. The proportion of people who feel it is acceptable to take a quick call on a handheld phone has doubled from seven per cent in 2014 to 14 per cent in 2016 and the percentage of drivers who feel it is safe to check social media on their phone when in stationary traffic, either at traffic lights or in congestion, has increased from 14 per cent in
  • Highways England awards NRTS contract to Telent Technology services
    December 19, 2017
    Highways England (HE) has awarded the second National Roads Telecommunications Service (NRTS) contract, valued £450m ($602m), to Telent Technology Services. The project aims to keep road users as safe and informed as possible on the UK's motorways and will run for seven years from March 2018. In addition, this technology will also continue to support the smart motorway and expressway programmes.
  • UK consortium awarded funding to develop autonomous vehicles
    April 24, 2017
    The StreetWise consortium, headed by UK artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), start-up has been awarded US$16.4 million (£12.8 million) in grant support for its US$29.5 million (£23 million) project. Awarded as part of the UK government’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles CAV2 competition, the grant will enable the consortium to develop and demonstrate autonomous transport in London, with the aim of launching a supervised trial of an autonomous vehicle fleet in the third quarter
  • Atkins Jacobs joint venture on pollution brings the noise
    November 7, 2023
    'Noise cameras' will identify vehicles which rev excessively or have illegal exhausts