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by jcrawfordor 2227 days ago
Video-based lane occupancy detection is widely used by traffic lights, but it's rare for these cameras to be connected to anything other than a trigger module in the signal cabinet. It is conceptually possible to also connect these cameras to a remote monitoring system, but this comes at a very high cost. My city has been one of the stronger proponents of doing so but has only connected a very limited number of intersections due to the expense.
1 comments
fapjacks 2227 days ago
The city (major suburb) I used to live in has done this with all the intersections that lead into the city, effectively making it impossible to enter or leave the city without them having a record of it. I know they are able to scan license plates from these cameras -- and do so automatically -- because it's how they are able to "catch" people trying to use those 3M strobe lights that ambulances and fire trucks use to make the lights turn green: An intersection detects the use of the strobe, but also is able to know that no (deployed) emergency vehicle is near that intersection, so it automatically "calls" the police department with the license plate of the offender. This information was buried on that city's website in a bunch of short videos the traffic engineers made about their new gee-whiz traffic management system.

Which, by the way, many municipalities are building (or have already built) "new gee-whiz traffic management systems" which are Orwellian nightmare machines. They seem to be flying well under the radar because everybody hates traffic, and especially because nobody is allowed into the new traffic management buildings for tours, to see the capabilities of the system that seem to be hooked directly into law enforcement's computers.

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jcrawfordor 2224 days ago
Do they directly say that they are using license plate reading? I find it far more likely that they are using the OPTICOM GPS solution which, in hybrid with OPTICOM IR, solves the same problem using cooperative radio equipment in emergency vehicles. Reporting on received IR preemption with no matching radio communication is an advertised feature of this system, whereas performing ALPR at the range and conditions of lane occupancy cameras is still largely experimental. ALPR virtually requires IR illumination, while lane occupancy cameras have no illuminators and are usually monochrome.
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