Speeding and drivers behaving badly are a major source of safety issues for not only that driver but all road users and the general public. Since COVID has hit there has been a significant decrease in traffic violation enforcement activities. Even though traffic volumes decreased during the COVID lockdown the number of fatalities remined unchanged and in 2022 we are on track to have one of the most deadly years on records since the 1980’s. Traffic speeds and aggressive driving has increased dramatically over the last 3 years. At the same time there has been a decrease in the number of law enforcement officers on the job and recruitment of officers has not been successful to replace the lack of police on the street. Therefore, we need to find new ways to support law enforcement with timely and accurate data on where to patrol or which drivers are causing safety issues for other motorists. The CTSRC is looking at the new paradigm of crowd sourced data or automated data collection to improve safety and document conditions at the time of a crash or crime. The goal of this project is to develop a prototype of a small camera system (and potentially radar) to monitory speeds on local roads while also capturing the license plate number of the vehicle. This unit would need to be small enough to mount to a mailbox. Where a small processor like a raspberry pi would serve as the PC that would process the data in real time. This system would allow for a user to set a speed threshold and then record the date, time, speed, and license plate number of a vehicle that exceeds that speed threshold.

Our team collaborated with Computer Science & Engineering 39 on this project.