Question

Message

blinkey501 · #1 Post by **blinkey501** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:59 pm

Whilst travelling countless miles i have noticed traffic counting markers at the side of the road and what is best described has darker marks on the road where the cables are covered by tar...

When i was travelling down tha A1 i noticed the tar marks every couple of hundred of yards obviously covering the cables again.... But
Why so close togeather, any ideas what these are for?

HowardQ · #2 Post by **HowardQ** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 12:31 am

There are all sorts of sensors hidden in the road these days Jay.
There are sensors in very many roads so councils can measure the average traffic flow speeds for all vehicles, and how busy the roads are through the day.
There was a rumour going around a while ago that they could get GPS info from sat navs to measure individual vehicle speeds, but it never got confirmed.
Originally all speed limits had to be set very near to the average speeds of the traffic on the road and this method is still used in many areas.
All early methods, the ones with wires over the road etc., were used for this, (this old version is also still used to decide if a speed trap was worthwhile).
The more recent technology is more worrying, I have even seen readouts for roads in my local village for average speeds between two points and in many cases I can't see any evidence of sensors, in other cases there are the ones you mention and other boxed areas.
I don't know how they do it but some of these they even manage to specify all types of vehicle in the info.
Average speeds for cars, lorries, taxis, buses, bikes etc..

We all know that car ECUs can be used to send signals to sensors and they are not supposed to be working yet but you really do wonder.

Those nice speed warning signs that display your speed in green or red or the others that just say SLOW DOWN and THANK YOU are not able to nick you.
But speeds of every vehicle going past are recorded and dowloaded via a USB port to a laptop at regular intervals.
Then there are the cameras, speed cameras and the rest.
It is amazing to sit in a council CCTV control room and see what is going on all around the town in such detail. (and scary!)
You know they are there and we have all seen the poor quality of images of some scrote on Crime Watch, but believe me you can see much clearer images on many of these cameras.
Oh and then there is ANPR, which is all over the place.
For example every car going into Meadowhall has been checked for years.

blinkey501 · #3 Post by **blinkey501** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 5:45 am

Well i didnt realise there was so much detail that was gained from the strips etc ... Thanks for your response howard. It would seem that the councils can track our every movement from when we set off to where we reach our destination..
The ANPR cameras don't worry me, in fact i think they are a good thing by stopping people driving on our roads with no insurance etc.
But after saying that some will not see this has a deterent

fatboy · #4 Post by **fatboy** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:12 pm

I think by now every petrol station has ANPR, round here all the smaller petrol stations that could not afford to install ANPR did not get thier buisness license renewed by the council

Nooj · #5 Post by **Nooj** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:41 pm

Big Brother IS watching you!

D-Rider · #6 Post by **D-Rider** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:31 pm

HowardQ wrote: There was a rumour going around a while ago that they could get GPS info from sat navs to measure individual vehicle speeds, but it never got confirmed.

Depends what you mean by "They".
Most currently have no means of getting this info out of the car at present though TomTom HD systems report back so that traffic info can be gleaned in order to identify average speeds and thus congestion (amongst other things)
My understanding is that this is aggregated info and not individually identified (and as most systems are portable between vehicles are relatively anonymous anyway)

HowardQ wrote: The more recent technology is more worrying, I have even seen readouts for roads in my local village for average speeds between two points and in many cases I can't see any evidence of sensors, in other cases there are the ones you mention and other boxed areas.
I don't know how they do it but some of these they even manage to specify all types of vehicle in the info.

One means of determining average traffic speed is from cell phones. Phone network companies aggregate the data and can provide historical traffic information. This is sold for many purposes - including route planning.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case for the the roads you mention but it is a common technique that is used that requires no specific additional infrastructure.

Capability will increase with V2X development (V2X being the global amalgamation of V2V or vehicle to vehicle communication and V2I or vehicle to infrastructure)
The requirement to equip all cars with e-call systems will result in every new vehicle being equipped with GPS and a cellular data link - primarily for automatic calling of the emergency services - but once all that is in the car it's there for other uses too.

Gio · #7 Post by **Gio** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 1:37 pm

HowardQ wrote:We all know that car ECUs can be used to send signals to sensors and they are not supposed to be working yet but you really do wonder.

The sticky lead stuff for roofs will blank it out I've been told.

D-Rider · #8 Post by **D-Rider** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:11 pm

Gio wrote:
HowardQ wrote:We all know that car ECUs can be used to send signals to sensors and they are not supposed to be working yet but you really do wonder.
The sticky lead stuff for roofs will blank it out I've been told.

errr so which cars are actually driving about with stuff that reports things to the infrastructure (other than limited stuff from a very small number of cars that use the phone network)

.... and although the technology is being developed, to communicate with infrastructure, you'd probably not want to block the communication for systems you've chosen and paid for (or you'd not buy them anyway) .... and more to the point, who is going to invest in the infrastructure. Not saying it won't come eventually but it's not an issue at present

HowardQ · #9 Post by **HowardQ** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 10:49 pm

D-Rider wrote:
HowardQ wrote: There was a rumour going around a while ago that they could get GPS info from sat navs to measure individual vehicle speeds, but it never got confirmed.
Depends what you mean by "They".
Most currently have no means of getting this info out of the car at present though TomTom HD systems report back so that traffic info can be gleaned in order to identify average speeds and thus congestion (amongst other things)
My understanding is that this is aggregated info and not individually identified (and as most systems are portable between vehicles are relatively anonymous anyway)

HowardQ wrote: The more recent technology is more worrying, I have even seen readouts for roads in my local village for average speeds between two points and in many cases I can't see any evidence of sensors, in other cases there are the ones you mention and other boxed areas.
I don't know how they do it but some of these they even manage to specify all types of vehicle in the info.
One means of determining average traffic speed is from cell phones. Phone network companies aggregate the data and can provide historical traffic information. This is sold for many purposes - including route planning.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case for the the roads you mention but it is a common technique that is used that requires no specific additional infrastructure.

Capability will increase with V2X development (V2X being the global amalgamation of V2V or vehicle to vehicle communication and V2I or vehicle to infrastructure)
The requirement to equip all cars with e-call systems will result in every new vehicle being equipped with GPS and a cellular data link - primarily for automatic calling of the emergency services - but once all that is in the car it's there for other uses too.

The main thing that worries me on the last one is how they identify the types of vehicle.
I have seen data examples from 2002 with average speeds for cars, medium goods vehicles and HGVs, which were taken from from the old wire accross the road to a box systems. Can't give a technical explanation but the wire obviously had the option to indicate the vehicle weight so they probably assumed the tree classes of vehicle totally based on the weight on the wire. They then just produced average speed data for all vehicle types. For this data sample taken in 2002, there were no bikes measured.
Interestingly, the vehicle type which most consistently broke the 30 limit were HGVs, almost all of which were 40 to 45mph.
The highest speed logged in this sample was by a car at 49mph.
The test was mid to late afternoon, so school leaving time.
this was ten years ago. These wire data samples are occasionally still used but only in simple cases.
The most recent examples I have seen were much more comprehensive and had average speeds for all different bits of all the roads I checked.
These were roads within a few 100 metres of my house where I have never seen any wired data collectors and on a walk around I could see nothing to indicate how the data had been collected, (other than a few sensor areas in the road, but not enough).
The data was supplied direct to Local Authority type body, (not a Council), from the Transport Ministry.
This was not highly clasified stuff from MI5 or something just standard stuff sent out on a CD following a request.
I can only think of things like sat navs and mobile phones as being possible ways of collecting this, but cannot work out how they get even more accurate vehicle type data.
I did once give somebody a lift to go out and download one of the speed warning signs (simple link via a laptop ), but never saw this data. Could there also be a camera within the unit that gives simple images that they can identify. could it be an ANPR type but they only use it for vehicle type analysis at this time.
Whatever, we are getting much closer to full vehicle data logging whenever the Government feel they need it.
It would only ever be used to track terrorists obviously, and could never be used in court, (unless the camera indicated a mobile traffic offence or something).

And finally!
The Government were actually talking about fitting transmitters to bikes as a trial so all speeds could be logged. They backed off late in the day.

D-Rider · #10 Post by **D-Rider** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:08 pm

HowardQ wrote: The Government were actually talking about fitting transmitters to bikes as a trial so all speeds could be logged. They backed off late in the day.

Indeed they were ....

I would be more concerned about the potential extended use of the kit that will support the requirement for e-call

HowardQ · #11 Post by **HowardQ** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:18 pm

Can't argue with that!
I am just talking about examples of relatively simple stuff they are using now, e-call is very different.

D-Rider · #12 Post by **D-Rider** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 10:36 am

HowardQ wrote:Can't argue with that!
I am just talking about examples of relatively simple stuff they are using now, e-call is very different.

Nah - simple stuff - basically a GPS module and a phone module.

What's more it doesn't really require a huge investment in infrastructure .... that's the bit that counts when it comes to rolling things out.

HowardQ · #13 Post by **HowardQ** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 1:38 pm

When I said different, I know it is simple technology and relatively cheap, but it is a much bigger issue for us law abiding motorcyclists who like to enjoy our bikes.

D-Rider · #14 Post by **D-Rider** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 2:33 pm

blinkey501 · #15 Post by **blinkey501** » Fri Jun 01, 2012 5:11 am

Just to continue on with this thread.
I have also noticed small cameras mounted in road sign posts.
Best way to detect them is the top of the post bends right over and these tend to be mostly at junctions.
They seems to be also on the straight road on the A614 at the top of dips where there is a blind spot in the botton of the dip.
And also on the A614 where bothamsall roundabout is.
I would love to know what all the cameras are for has there seems to be a lot of stealth technology about where i seem to think the authorities don't want us to know whats what.
Big brother again?

Anybody got any ideas?