Road Surface Inlays & Grey Boxes

[RingSpanner]

Many roads have seemingly been “enhanced” with the addition - in each traffic lane - of two rectangular surface inlays, joined together, and apparently looped to a grey roadside metal box about one metre height
The inlays are of similar appearance to the sensor lines which Truvelo Scameras use.

Lots of these have been springing up of late across the country and I am intrigued as to what they are.
Big Brother .............?

[alphadog]

Sound like counting loops - count the number of vehicles passing over so the Highways Agency can get meaningful road usage stats.

[RingSpanner]

Cheers AD.

[100SRV]

Could these inductive sensor loops be receivers for RFID tagged numberplates I read about somewhere? RFID is very popular for factory automation / parts tracking and would be a pretty easy way to track vehicle movements - much easier than a GPS based system as the sensor is fixed and collects data (rather than the sensor moving and requiring the data to be collected from it). The receiver boxes can link to the fibre-optic lines that were run next to trunk routes a few years ago and....

On a related topic it is possible to classify vehicles by there electromagnetic signature so you could easily distinguish cars from vans and HGVs.

100SRV

[agent006]

100SRV said:

Could these inductive sensor loops be receivers for RFID

They could be, but aren't. All they can tell is if a vehicle has gone past and in what direction and roughly what speed.

[RingSpanner]

Cheers guys...

Thing is, on one road I travel, within 70 yards or so - there are three sets inlaid on the same side. Strange.

[2something]

This could just be made up rambling, but I think they are sometimes used to get an idea of queues/traffic flow into traffic lights / junctions.