Design of Road surveillance system for low visibility, bad weather and emergency situations

Abstract

Traffic accidents are major causes of death and disability worldwide. Lack of visibility due to Fog and darkness are main causes of accidents. These accidents may turn into fatalities and long traffic jams if proper actions are not taken. In this paper we initially review the accident data and scenarios and then propose a road surveillance system in low visibility and emergency. This proposed system that mainly performs three tasks as turning ON road-alert lights, if a vehicle unexpectedly stops on road-side due to any technical fault or accidents. This will help upcoming vehicles to have prior information of unexpectedly stopped vehicle that will reduce accident due to vehicles collision, other side turning ON road-street lights automatically with darkness detection. This will reduce accident by improving visibility in night or fog and Send Emergency Notification to the control room if vehicle remain still for more than 20 seconds. This will help in taking proper and timely action in case of emergencies avoiding fatalities and traffic jams for hours. The system is based on Arduino and GSM module and tested for each of the three scenarios (fog, darkness, emergency).  The result shows that the proposed system worked efficiently in each condition and can be used to improve traffic safety.