Road safety technology company Acusensus’s “Heads Up” distracted and impaired driving technology has been featured to a mainstream audience on the BBC’s Crimewatch Live television show.
Devon and Cornwall Police’s Head of Road Safety, Adrian Leisk, told how the technology was used in a world-first trial to detect potential drink-drivers in the run-up to Christmas.
He explained how the cameras were trained to identify impaired driving by analysing vehicle and driver movements over a two-week period and that during two live trials in December, four impaired driving offences were detected, leading to four drivers being charged.
“It builds up a picture over two week period of what typical driving behavior looks like, and then it looks for outlying behaviours,” Mr Leisk explained. “Based on some laboratory testing they’ve [Acusensus have] done as well, identifies things that it might wish to be areas of concern. Obviously it’s down to the officer who stops the vehicle to determine whether they are impaired and to conduct the procedures, but this is really another tool to give us intelligence, and obviously puts a powerful message out there that we’re prepared to use new technology, try new things, to try and tackle what is a really stubborn issue.”
The technology was developed to spot people driving while using a mobile phone, or driving without wearing a seatbelt, and Mr Leisk added that the technology has been used to detect 4,500 seat belt offences and 1,000 mobile phone offences between July and November. He then also highlighted the parallel campaign Operation Snap in which drivers upload dashcam footage of dangerous driving for the Police to review and follow-up as necessary.
You can watch the whole segment here.
(Picture – Acusensus, screen grab courtesy of BBC Crimewatch)
