According to National Highways, at one point, a high-visibility camera placed in the roadworks south of junction 23 of the M6 at Haydock, was spotting an offence every 90 seconds – compared to the average at all other sites of one every six minutes.
National Highways adds that it has been working with engineering company AECOM on the pilot project so as to collect data on offences as part of its work to boost safety.
Commenting on the project, Jamie Hassall, National Highways manager for the data collection project, said:
“We wanted to find out whether driving through a substantial section of roadworks with barriers, a reduced speed limit and other traffic management would mean drivers and passengers modifying their behaviour. The findings are disappointing to say the least with drivers spotted using a mobile ‘phone almost every five minutes and lots of drivers and passengers simply not bothering to belt up. Hopefully, these results will be a wake-up call to motorway users – especially as we head into the busy Christmas and New Year travel period.”
The special camera system uses artificial intelligence to photograph offences which are then verified by at least two pairs of human eyes. National Highways believes the cameras have huge potential to be taught to look for other traffic or vehicle offences and poor driver behaviour such as unsecure loads, tailgating or eating at the wheel.
Dr Jamie Uff, AECOM Technical Director who’s been running the pilot project on the ground, said:
“We ran six short data collection sessions along the southbound M6 just outside National Highways’ regional operations centre at Newton-le-Willows and the numbers detected were far higher than expected. The numbers of people killed or seriously injured as a result of these behaviours remain high. The technology AECOM is deploying makes detection straightforward and is providing valuable insight to the police and policy makers on the current level of road user behaviour. Almost 60 percent of the mobile phone offences spotted were committed by car drivers, while seat belt offences were typically an issue associated with commercial vehicles, with 86 percent of the offences being committed by van or HGV occupants.”
