Near-misses, collisions, unsafe driving and roadworks – just some of the hazards that National Highways has to manage on motorways and major A roads across the country.

But now, after National Highways launched a competition to find new ways to manage such hazards, six winning ideas are going to be trialled which could help to protect road users.

Working with Connected Places Catapult, the Hazard Protection on Roads Accelerator targeted small or medium enterprises that may not have worked with National Highways before and had some innovation gems to share in dealing with potential safety risks.

Having sifted through some 50 applications, a shortlist of nine organisations received funding, up to £30,000, to design trials for their ideas. Judges then had to whittle those down to five who would receive up to £60,000 additional funding to deliver the trials. However, competition was so fierce that they eventually decided to go forward with six of the projects rather than five.

The winning ideas include virtual reality training courses for drivers, sensors which automatically detect hazards and a data analysis platform. Between now and November, the six finalists will deliver their ideas in trials working with National Highways and its supply chain.

National Highways’ Technology Programme Portfolio Manager, James Gibson, said:

“We are delighted with the innovative ideas that we have discovered and very excited about how well they are developing – it was so difficult trying to choose the final products to take forward that ultimately we decided to add one more to the list.

“Safety is our priority and we are always looking for new and innovative ways to help better protect people who use or work on our roads. We are confident that through these trials we can find better ways of identifying, analysing and responding to hazards, that could ultimately help to prevent road accidents and people coming to harm on our roads.”

The six projects being taken forward are:

•  VESOS, (based in Devon): VESOS has developed TeCall to harvest eCall data automatically sent after collisions. During the trial TeCall will fuse eCall with other hazard alerts producing detailed and validated incident data and add greater context. These will be compared with corresponding data to measure its effectiveness and potential improvements in response times.
• Valerann, (London): Valerann’s real-time road data analytics platform fuses data from a broad range of sources to deliver road traffic situation insights and accidents risk modelling, enabling proactive management of incidents and risks on the road. The product will be trialled by traffic officers in the West Midlands.
• VivaCity (London): VivaCity’s sensors provide data on hazardous interactions between road users (near misses), enabling safety teams to understand the causation of conflicts and collisions and enable better and more timely interventions to be planned. The trial will assess and compare the viability of collecting near miss data from VivaCity’s sensor and National Highways’ CCTV.
• Esitu Solutions (based in Nottingham): Esitu Solutions will be developing a virtual reality training course as a downloadable app for the Meta Quest headset to promote safer and more considerate driving. The trial will include testing with road users to assess its impact on confidence and intended driving behaviour.
• Roadside Technologies (Chesterfield): Roadside Technologies is developing an automated hazardous object detection solution using the latest in sensing technology, to improve road user safety and enable smoother journeys through temporary work zones on roads. This will be tested across a 1-mile stretch of a live work zone to detect hazards.
• CrossTech (Wiltshire): CrossTech has developed a stopped vehicle detection verification system. The platform builds on the successful automated computer vision inspection platform from the rail industry, called Hubble. The trial will test the performance of this system by applying its computer vision analysis to over 100 hours of CCTV footage and comparing the outputs with event data from National Highway’s own systems.

All finalists will be guided through a bespoke programme tailored to their requirements offering coaching and mentoring, business development opportunities and technical and procurement support.

Connected Places Catapult’s Executive Director of SME Development and Academic Engagement, Alex Weedon said:

“It is fantastic to see six cutting edge companies with exciting new technologies and solutions taking their ideas forward as part of the Hazard Protection on Roads Accelerator competition.

“Connected Places Catapult provides each of them with investment, business and marketing support; and I look forward to helping them develop their ideas and make good progress towards getting their innovations to be used in real world environments.”

(Picture – VESOS)