Design and Performance Evaluation of a Highway Vehicle Speed Monitoring System

Abstract

The menace of road traffic crashes and associated loss of lives and properties have continued to increase  exponentially. This work is aimed at using piezoelectric pressure transducers to design a system which  could be employed to detect over speeding vehicles and alert monitoring authorities which will subsequently result in the reduction of high rate of road accidents and material losses resulting from the problem of road traffic accidents caused by excessive speed. To achieve that, two arrays of piezoelectric
pressure sensors were mounted across the road under study. The separation distances of the two sensors were determined using the maximum allowable speed on the road and a threshold time of travel. The sensor systems were connected to a PIC microcontroller and configured to monitor the threshold time (which is the least time of travel below which over-speeding would be recorded).When over speed is detected, a buzzer connected to the system microcontroller will be triggered on to alert the road safety officials around while a camera also connected to the microcontroller captures the particulars of the over speeding vehicle. Power model technique was adopted to analyze the data collated in the field test of the designed system. The result of the data analyses showed that the system, if fully implemented and enforced would cause a high level of compliance to speed limit regulation and about sixty five percent (65%) reduction of road traffic accidents will be achieved.