Commercial vehicles represent less than 6% of traffic on the USA's roads, but are involved in one in eight road accident fatalities. It is not enough to educate careless lorry drivers and car drivers who do not understand commercial vehicle operation. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) can help to remove dangerous commercial vehicles from the roads. This article argues that automated number plate recognition offers a promising technological solution with minimal infrastructure requirements. Minnesota State Police has been able to use a number plate reading system, to identify high-risk violators with an accuracy of more than 92%. Its system integrates number plate photography with weigh-in-motion and vehicle-size sensors, and very rapidly searches a database for previous violations, carrier profile, and driver history. Although Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) tags, using radio frequency (RF) technology, have been very accurate in small, well-defined vehicle populations, they are often too costly and not welcomed by road freight companies. Wisconsin State Police uses the same system as Minnesota State Police. Both police forces find that their systems provide accurate online performance, even on worn number plates. Such realtime monitoring systems are in place and operating at sites around the world.
Abstract