Road Safety at School Zones

Category

Smart Transport Infrastructure Award

Submitting Organisation

SAGE Group

Rising concerns about road safety near schools have been identified from both parents and school staff. The goal of smart school zone signage is to decrease the average speed of drivers during school hours when there are pedestrians present thus improving the safety of vulnerable road users and increasing the alertness of drivers. Maximising driver alertness and their consciousness of safety via ITS-enabled signage over and above traditional static signage and wig-wags has encouraged more drivers to obey school zone rules.

The new electronic speed limit signs have been fitted with a SAGE Edge device, capturing de-identified data that is providing detailed real-time analysis of the road network traffic performance to the state’s Traffic Management Centre to support flow optimisation and future planning. Additionally, the signage hardware is solar-powered and can operate in adverse weather conditions for increased signage availability, assisting driver awareness of changed speed conditions and improving road safety.

The client can control the operation times of the sign, monitor and update the variable message display and also monitor the system health for any faults remotely. The smart school zone signs have been shown to decrease the average speed of drivers during peak school hours increasing the alertness of drivers, the safety of vulnerable road users whilst minimising driver speed reduction delays. By maximising driver alertness and consciousness of safety through an active and configurable ITS signage messaging, rather than simply another static sign, further encourages drivers to obey school zone rules. Elsewhere, radar-enabled sign variants have also provided measurable statistics on driver behaviour allowing the effects of custom messaging and/or wig-wag functionality activation to be clearly understood.