Data driven decisions save time and money
The mayor and the representatives of the municipality of Horka I share this philosophy, and that is why, before purchasing a costly speed radar enforcement system, they wanted to be sure that such solution would be effective and solve their problem – making the roads safer by limiting the speed of incoming vehicles.
The municipality selected a total of three sections for analyzing the composition and speed of passing motor vehicles. For a long time, however, they were unable to find a company that would supply them with the underlying data easily, quickly and without the need to carry out invasive building modifications or spend additional funds on special equipment. There are not many solutions that fit the request, so the leadership was even more surprised when our sensors started delivering the first outputs 48 hours after the order was approved. How was this achieved?
Our solution
Since no camera system has yet been installed in the municipality, it was a logical step to use our AI autonomous sensor viSEN (VisionCraft Sensor), which is characterized by very simple installation (usually onto a street light pole or a traffic light, for example) and extremely fast deployment. We agreed with the mayor that the municipality would install and move the sensor within the selected locations themselves (we have a simple installation manual prepared for these cases), so all we had to do was pack and send the sensor by post. The installation took place the following day, took about 30 minutes, and on the next day after the sensor was revived, representatives of the municipality could monitor the first traffic data on their road. This easy process is then repeated to 2 other locations, to identify the most exposed area for driver speeding.
Our sensors evaluate all learned events that appear in its field of vision - therefore there is no problem during the detection to adjust the output criteria, i.e. the data that the customer wishes to visualize. Here, too, it turned out that it would be valuable to “extract” more information from the collected data than the municipality originally imagined. The set of outputs was therefore extended (and retrieved from historical data) to the following areas during the measurement:
- traffic composition,
- vehicle counts,
- the number of pedestrian and cyclists,
- the split of vehicle speeds above and below the specified limit (the user can select the desired limit in the website portal),
- TOP 10 fastest vehicles including the time of passage in each direction,
- distribution of measured speeds in both directions in defined segments,
- graph of the average speed to/from the municipality in 5-minute intervals,
- number of vehicle passes in hourly intervals
- and a histogram of vehicle passes.
The advantage of the viSEN sensor is not only the immediate delivery of results, but also the ability to monitor traffic in both directions at the same time with the deployment of a single device. Of course, there is also an emphasis on protecting the privacy of monitored subjects in accordance with the GDPR requirements, and that is why all image data processing takes place “on the EDGE” and therefore does not send any visual and personal data outside the device itself.
Conclusion
The goal of the analysis was to obtain a detailed overview of the composition, speed, and trends of traffic in the given locations. The intention itself was not in any way to identify possible sinners who violated traffic regulations (for such cases, the system would need to be expanded, for example, to detect license plates). The output for the municipality of Horka I is a set of visualized data that are now used as a basis for a qualified decision on the acquisition and an ROI of a stationary radar, or for finding another preventive solution against speeding drivers.
Statement of the contracting authority
It was not at all easy to find a company that would carry out the analysis of traffic in the village that we required in a reasonable time and at an acceptable cost. So unique is the solution, that it was actually one of the previously contacted competing companies that recommended the VisionCraft solution. I myself was surprised by how easy the installation and overall operation of the solution is. The accuracy and scope of the supplied data, which we already had the day after installation, is quite sufficient for our purposes. Now we are deciding on where we could further use such sensors within the municipality, because there are really many possibilities of use. I therefore warmly recommend the solution from VisionCraft company for similar use-cases.
Ing. Jiří Doubek, mayor of Horka I
