Up to 10 companies with ideas to help protect road users in England by better managing hazards on motorways and major A roads will be shortlisted early next year in a new innovation competition from National Highways delivered by Connected Places Catapult.
Launched today, the Hazard Protection on Roads Accelerator programme is seeking applications for either completely novel approaches to the issue, the application of existing technology in new areas, or the development of new technology for existing areas.
Applications are invited until the end of December, and innovations must fall within one of the following five categories:
Gathering data about hazards on roads: technologies which contribute to identifying and gathering data on hazards such as CCTV data, analytics, satellite and in-car data including GPS and vehicle sensors
Streamlining hazard responses: helping to respond quickly and accurately to any identified hazard. Solutions could include automatically alerting drivers, automated responses and clean-up of hazards and notifying professionals such as traffic officers
Improving driver notification of hazards: better notification to drivers when a hazard is identified or – for planned roadworks – making sure drivers are aware and know how to safely navigate them.
Improving testing of hazard detection technology: this aims to assess the real-world performance of any technology, enabling smoother software updates and also to generate datasets on hazard detection performance.
Influencing drivers to reduce unsafe behaviour: innovations which could reduce unsafe driving behaviour such as using mobile phones.
