UK roads: A gadget for every mile
The Highway Agency says the average motorist traveling on British roads is unknowingly aided by “at least a gadget every mile,” thanks to an ever-growing plethora of journey planning tools.
Many of those latest gadgets will be on display at Birmingham’s Gadget Show Live this weekend.
“We take our task of managing the strategic network very seriously and we employ huge amounts of technology to keep the country moving,” said Denise Plumpton, director of information for the Highways Agency.
Among the technology deployed by the agency are:
- Closed-circuit cameras that monitor the strategic road network;
- In-road detector loops that measure traffic flow and feed live data — including the speed of slow-moving traffic — to the agency’s Website;
- Intelligent traffic lights that control signals at peak travel times to prevent dangerous bunching of traffic;
- Motorway signs with real travel times to upcoming destinations based on data from other cars that have already completed the journey;
- Fibre optic stress monitors on bridges and embankments;
- Remote temperature sensors to let the agency know when and where the winter fleet will be needed; and
- Automatic congestion alerts based on a Highways Agency model built using four terabytes of traffic data.
