Safer roads thanks to smarter connectivity
By
November 17, 2023
With its big budget campaign and quirky TV adverts, Waka Kotahi (NZ Transport Agency) has set its sights on an aspirational goal for New Zealand - no deaths or serious injuries on roads by 2050.
It’s an ambitious target but it’s hard to argue with the intention of the strategy when you consider Auckland alone recorded a 120% increase in road fatalities last year. (1)
One thing’s for sure, smart city technology to help monitor, manage roads and ensure safe driving behaviour, will play a big role.
CCTV, traffic signals, electronic signage and displays, critical information to help with your journey, it’s all part of the solution.
Palmerston North City Council uses fibre for safer traffic management.
Take a look at how Palmerston North City Council are using the power of fibre from Chorus to keep traffic, transport and utilities running smoother than ever.
Palmerston North City Council uses fibre for safer traffic management.
How can video help make traffic safer?
As any local Council or roading authority knows, video is critical to road safety measures, providing the means to see exactly what’s going on in real-time.
Not only does video support the phasing of lights, it provides many insights for proactive and predictive smart city applications. This can include accident avoidance, police monitoring and tracking, and traffic management to ease congestion, which is estimated to cost up to $1.3 billion a year in Auckland alone.
Low resolution video will limit what you can do with it, regardless of the speed of your connection. High-resolution video, consistently and almost instantaneously delivered to a place of analysis, is the only true way to embrace all these smart city opportunities to empower rapid decision making.
Why fibre is the smart choice for traffic?
It’s a simple equation: as the cost of high-definition camera technology goes down and the data appetite of smart applications and quality of high definition goes up – fibre becomes the logical connectivity solution for better roading management.
For example, UHD (4K) cameras which are now readily available can capture around 25 times the resolution of analogue, so hard-wired fibre connections for fixed civic infrastructure is well placed to deliver the reliability, consistency and ever-increasing bandwidth demands.
While the benefits of fibre as a network technology are well known for homes and businesses, this has been also complemented recently with the creation of a new product purely designed for smart city applications – Smart Locations.
Smart Locations provide fibre connectivity without the need for a physical address or dwelling. Instead, devices that require high data i.e. CCTV, antennas, and billboards can plug into a standard Fibre ONT or SFP Fibre ONT (size of your thumb, perfect for small spaces and limited power) anywhere around New Zealand or on any street furniture (such as traffic lights & bus stops).
The service essentially means we can take fibre further for all sorts of remote applications in urban environments. This certainly shifts the dial on connectivity solutions for smart cities and IoT. While wireless technology is fine there’s plenty of reasons why fibre connectivity for high-bandwidth IoT applications such as CCTV, should be preferred.
Take a look at how New Zealand is using technology like this to evolve our out-of-home advertising.
1. Deaths on Auckland roads increase by 120% as Govt commits to zero fatalities by 2050
