Automatic Incident Detection (AID)

Safety-critical incidents such as “stopped vehicle” and “wrong-way driving” need to be detected and classified automatically in real time, with very low tolerance for false alarms. For certain road tunnels in Europe, automatic incident detection is a required safety measure under Directive 2004/54/EC.

Low number of false alarms

During thorough testing over 70 days of ordinary traffic, covering almost 1.5 million passing vehicles, the TrafSense road monitoring system generated only 0.28 false alarms per km of road per 24 hours. This reduces the risk of road operators being flooded with false alarms and helps them stay prepared to respond quickly to real incidents that may threaten health and safety. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) requires fewer than 1 false alarm per km of road per 24 hours.

High precision in detection of position of stopped vehicles and wrong-way driving vehicles

Stopped vehicle: TrafSense standard deviation between reported and actual position is 6 m. Wrong-way vehicle: the standard deviation is 10 m. These results demonstrate precise localisation of detected incidents. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) has less stringent requirements for the positional accuracy of these incident types, requiring only that the relevant camera zone, typically 60–70 m long, is identified.

Short delay between incident detection and alarm

Stopped vehicle: TrafSense Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) is 11 seconds. Wrong-way vehicle: TrafSense MTTD is 3 seconds. Both values are well below the Norwegian Public Roads Administration’s (NPRA) requirement of less than 20 seconds.

Precise detection of stop positions of vehicles trapped in a tunnel by smoke and fire

TrafSense provides playback functionality that allows road operators to identify the positions of stopped vehicles for first responders. This can be critical when smoke or fire limits the visibility of video cameras and makes it difficult to locate vehicles. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) has verified the TrafSense playback functionality in a closed tunnel filled with artificial smoke.