PING! — Truvelo strikes a conciliatory tone

This year at Highways UK — 18/19 October, in Hall 3 & 3a at NEC Birmingham — Truvelo UK is talking about its non-HOTA solutions for speed compliance.

Home Office Type Approval has for many years been the official seal of approval for legal and legally binding operation of speed cameras on the UK’s roads. However, it is recognised that non-HOTA solutions can play a major part in encouraging greater compliance and thus safer roads.

This shift in thinking is reinforced by such as Project PING, a National Highways initiative to work with fleet operators and, using on-road sensors, ‘ping’ them messages when their operatives are driving unsafely or illegally on the Strategic Road Network. The aim is to encourage greater compliance without having to engage in more formal legislative action.

Truvelo’s non-HOTA products enable an escalating approach to on-road offences. Speed Information Displays (SIDs), which instantly notify drivers of their speeds using numbers or pictograms, have a proven, positive influence on compliance without the need for prosecutions.

Automated Community Speed Watch (ACSW) combines Truvelo’s VIA-Cam radar speed camera, lamp-column mounting or off-grid power, and wireless connectivity. It enables Community Speed Watch operations to go on without the need for a roadside human presence. This increases individual safety, reduces subjectivity, and provides a 24-hour capability in all light conditions.

ACSW provides a further, intermediary step between the use of SIDs to give motorists real-time feedback on their driving performance and full speed enforcement using HOTA camera systems. It is already in operation in Hertfordshire and having a very positive effect on compliance levels.

HOTA mobile enforcement solutions can also be used as part of PING-type initiatives to capture speeding offences and encourage compliance rather than move straight to licence endorsements, driving bans and fines.

“In fact, this is something that we’ve already been doing for some years now,” says Calvin Hutt, Sales and Marketing Director.

“Truvelo has long supported the idea that the same levels of safety should apply on both public and private roads. There are many locations — construction sites, quarries, major manufacturing sites, airports and campuses — where vehicles are in constant operation. Many drivers took the attitude that once off public roads the rules didn’t apply. This compromised safety and has resulted in deaths.

“Private estate operators can’t issue licence endorsements or driving bans as such. However, they can identify repeat and serious offenders and ban them from their sites. As this will often affect drivers’ livelihoods, there’s therefore a significant incentive to comply.

“This is a solution that we’ve now supplied to several major Blue Chip companies in the UK, as well as major airports, and we’re delighted to see initiatives such as PING extending the same philosophy onto public roads. We’re always going to need more assertive action against serious and serial offenders but compliance is a more palatable way of encouraging thoughtful behaviour from careless drivers as compared with the truly dangerous.”

To learn more, visit Stand 74 at Highways UK 2023, or go to www.truvelouk.com.