What are HOV-lanes,carpooling
& how does it work?
Let's get started by explaining the term "carpooling". Some synonyms you might be familiar with: ride-sharing or lift-sharing. We talk about carpooling when car journeys are shared so that more than one person travels in the same car.
This allows you to share travel costs with other people, which of course benefits your wallet. If a significant number of people were to take part in carpooling, that would solve the problem of congestions in many places. Or just think of the increasing air pollution and general CO2 emissions. The rule remains: the fewer cars on the road, the less congestions & pollution.
HOV-lanes
Thanks to all the previously mentioned advantages, carpooling is increasingly being promoted by governments all over the world. This has manifested itself in the emergence of HPT lanes.
HOV stands for "High Occupancy Vehicle". Some countries have already introduced the use of HOV-lanes. It is a separate driving compartment where only High Occupancy Vehicles are allowed to drive, such as a bus, or a car with 3 or 4 occupants.
A car often has a capacity of 4 full seats.
But in the vast
majority of all cars there is only 1 person, the driver. As a result, the
majority of cars will not be allowed to use HOV-lanes, which means that you
will often reach your destination much faster via a HOV-lane than by using the
normal driving lanes (traffic jams, etc.).
How does this work?
Thanks to ANPR cameras, it is possible to count fairly accurately how many occupants a particular car has. To start with, we need 2 ANPR cameras that can read both the number plate on the front and the number plate on the back of the car. Of course, we also need to know how many people are actually in the car.
For this purpose, we are going to place another 2 ROV cameras between the 2 ANPR cameras (ROV = Reconaissance Occupants Véhicule). These ROV cameras are aimed at the windscreen and side windows of the car.
These 4 cameras together send all the data to a back-office system which in turn will convert this data into valuable information, such as which vehicle is using the HOV-lane, which number plate is linked to this vehicle and how many occupants have been counted.
One
has to indicate in advance with which number plate and with how many occupants
a vehicle will use the HOV-lane.
This makes it perfectly possible to check whether or
not a certain vehicle is supposed to drive on the HOV-lane.
Polarized filter
The driver or occupants of a car are very often difficult to see on the screen, due to sunlight reflecting on the windscreen, rain, hail, ...
Fortunately, this can easily be solved
by placing a polarized filter on the camera. This filter automatically removes
any reflection on the glass (see example below).
The Macq CAM 5P cameras are equipped with Artificial Intelligence. To clarify: artificial intelligence is termed artificial intelligence when an artifact displays a form of intelligence. This allows the camera to identify faces and thus count the number of occupants in a car. It is important to know that only individuals can be detected here, and not who that particular person is or what identity that person has.