Director-General of Traffic Mr. Gregorio Serrano López participated on 20 February in the field test of SICE’s vehicle range prevention system installed by the company on a pilot section of the A-8 highway.
This section has been chosen since fog banks extremely reducing visibility are frequent: over the past three years 1,500 hours with visibility below 40m have been registered. As a preventive measure and in order to avoid crashes, traffic is diverted to the N-634.
Ten pairs of beacons with vehicle detection and warning sensors have been installed for extremely low visibility situations. Every beacon is installed on a 1.5m pole at a distance of 50m from the previous one, has two LED lamps (amber and red) with brightness control that light up depending on whether the passage of a vehicle with reduced visibility (red) is detected or whether a conventional guidance mode (orange) is required.
In addition to the main functionality (vehicle detection and alerting), the beacons can record the number of vehicles on the road, allowing the central system to identify incidents on the latter.
This new system follows SICE’s line concerning intelligent signaling system for dangerous crossings: cost-effective solutions (not added cost arising from civil works) bringing huge benefits in terms of road safety. In both cases, this is a little effort with a large positive impact on road safety.
