Commercial Vehicle Applications

Electronic clearance is designed to allow compliant commercial vehicles to continue past checkpoints at mainline speeds. As a vehicle approaches a checkpoint, communications between the vehicle and the inspection station take place – often by means of a dedicated short-range wireless link – allowing the authorities to check relevant information, such as the vehicle’s credentials, weight, safety status and cargo. This system allows enforcement personnel to select potentially unsafe vehicles for inspection, while permitting safe vehicles to bypass the commercial vehicle checkpoint. (See Credential Checking)

As a complement to commercial vehicle electronic clearance, automated roadside safety inspection ITS applications use automated inspection capabilities to facilitate safety checks with greater speed and accuracy during a safety inspection at a vehicle inspection site. This helps reduce the amount of time spent by the vehicle examiners inspecting vehicles, whilst also providing more reliable data on the safety status of the vehicle. (See Safety Information Exchange)

Among the many ITS automotive engineering applications are systems that monitor the safety condition of a vehicle and cargo as well as the driver – without the need for the vehicle to slow down. The monitoring capabilities may include:

• sensing the condition of critical vehicle components, including brakes, tyres and lights
• sensing shifts in the cargo while the vehicle is in motion
• monitoring the time-on-task of drivers
• monitoring the drivers’ alertness level

Safety warnings are provided to drivers and can be made available to vehicle fleet managers or controllers and to roadside enforcement personnel. (See Safety)

ITS applications can smooth the administrative processes required of commercial fleet operators by government or regulatory bodies. They may allow the automatic purchase of credentials (such as a port permit or other selective access toll) and include automated reporting of mileage and fuel use. This saves the operator time and money. (See Enforcement)

ITS has a part to play in the response to incidents involving hazardous materials (HAZMAT). Law enforcement and HAZMAT response personnel can be provided with timely, accurate information on cargo contents at the scene of an accident – so they know exactly how to handle the materials involved in an appropriate way. Emergency responders can be provided with access to this information – either through remote access to the relevant databases, or, in real-time, through the use of readers that communicate with the HAZMAT vehicle’s on-board transponder. (See Emergency Response)

ITS applications provide real-time communications between drivers, dispatchers and intermodal transport providers for the purposes of vehicle location identification, dispatching, and tracking – to help optimise freight operations and vehicle utilisation. (See Operations & Fleet Management)