Published: December 2011 | Category: Safety, security and public health , Research programme , Research & reports | Audience: General
Road safety is an issue that impacts on all levels of government and population. Since a high of 843 fatalities in 1973 the overall crash rate has been declining and 384 fatalities were recorded on New Zealand roads in 2009. Although this represents a significant reduction in casualties, there is still a need to reduce the current rate of about one fatality per day.
Lessening the incidence of exceeding the speed limit is one way that can effectively reduce these rates.
Speed enforcement technology has now progressed to the current state of point-to-point speed cameras. P2P cameras operate by photographing all vehicles passing both the start and end of a section of road under consideration. The photographs are time stamped which allows travel time to be derived. Computer software identifies the number plates of passing vehicles and matches the images taken. The cameras are a known distance apart and hence the average speed can be calculated.
Photographs of vehicles exceeding the trigger speed can be forwarded to the infringement division for validation.
This research report comments on the technology and application of these devices to New Zealand, and sites that may be suitable for these devices.
Keywords: 85th percentile speed, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), average speed, crash reduction, point-to-point (P2P), Police Infringement Bureau (PIB), road policing, speed compliance
