Vehicle to improve safety and reduce disruption on motorways

A new maintenance assistance vehicle (MAV) developed by Highways England and Mott MacDonald to help replace overhead signs was inspired by an aircraft catering vehicle and is set to reduce the duration of roadworks.
September 16, 2016 Read time: 1 min

A new maintenance assistance vehicle (MAV) developed by 8101 Highways England and 1869 Mott MacDonald to help replace overhead signs was inspired by an aircraft catering vehicle and is set to reduce the duration of roadworks.

Traditionally, signs are mounted and removed using a flat-bed truck, crane and access platform – a process that can take up to 40 minutes. However with the MAV’s hydraulically elevating body, this can be achieved in around 20 to 25 minutes by using a small jib crane which is mounted on the vehicle itself.

Once elevated to the correct height, the jib crane lifts the detached sign off the gantry and the operatives use a trolley to move it into the truck’s main body. This procedure is reversed when installing a new signs.

The hydraulically powered scissor lift enables the signs at heights of up to 8.5m to be serviced in wind speeds of up to 47mph, while its CCTV cameras enable the driver to correctly position the vehicle below the gantry before maintenance and monitor the operatives while they work.

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • SCANaCAR and VideoBadge counter parking’s prickly problems.
    June 4, 2014
    Colin Sowman discovers how the latest systems can boost productivity and reduce conflict in parking enforcement. Parking enforcement is something of a ‘Cinderella’ service for local authorities: while necessary to keep the roads open and the traffic flowing, it is an expensive operation and can be loss-making. It is also labour intensive and parking enforcement officers are routinely verbally abused and sometimes physically attacked. Some authorities are now looking to automate parking enforcement in orde
    Read More
  • Intersection monitoring from video using 3D reconstruction
    March 9, 2016
    Researchers Yuting Yang, Camillo Taylor and Daniel Lee have developed a system to turn surveillance cameras into traffic counters. Traffic information can be collected from existing inexpensive roadside cameras but extracting it often entails manual work or costly commercial software. Against this background the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) was looking for an efficient and user-friendly solution to extract traffic information from videos captured from road intersections.
    Read More
  • Artificial Intelligence applications for commercial vehicle operations
    December 28, 2021
    The combination of machine learning, deep neural networks and computer vision provides opportunities to address in new ways an increasing range of functions that are a part of commercial vehicle operations. Here, IRD’s Rish Malhotra details how.
    Read More
  • Bespoke ITS is helping to reduced collisions on America’s rural roads
    October 22, 2014
    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.
    Read More

Highlighted Content