Experimental research on introduction of distributed road tracking system for road traffic registration in Latvia

Worldwide the number of people killed in road traffic accidents is estimated at 1.2 million a year. Although, road traffic injuries have been a leading cause of mortality for many years, most traffic crashes are both predictable and preventable. There is considerable evidence on interventions that are effective at making roads safer. Countries that have successfully implemented these interventions have seen corresponding reductions in road traffic deaths. One of the important factors for safety is cars movement speeds. In this paper a distributed road tracking system is proposed. This system has multiple devices installed on city roads equipped with cameras and automatic car number recognition module. Two experiments demonstrated that spot speed cameras have very limited local impact on driving speed – drivers are slowing down exactly near the speed camera and accelerate straight after passing it, which means that drivers afraid of fines and slow down when they are checked on speed. Based on the experiments’ results it was suggested that proposed system introduction on the roads of Latvia will have a significant effect of reducing the average speed of cars and decrease road fatality rate on the roads of Latvia by at least 25%.