Solutions by typeMobility analysis
Who reports a car stopped where it should not be?
What is standing still draws no attention
Twenty past nine at night, kilometre 48. A car is stopped on the hard shoulder with the warning triangle out and smoke coming from the bonnet. The driver has got out and is standing outside, one step from the lane where everyone else is still going past at a hundred and twenty. It has been like this for four minutes. In the control room a hundred and sixty cameras are cycling, and that one has not been on screen since seven.
10 cameras across 7 sectors
This is how you ask for it
«Alert me if a vehicle stops on the hard shoulder or in a lane, and tell me where and since when.»
Every minute that car stays there with someone standing beside it is a minute of risk that depends on nobody. And when the breakdown is in a live lane, the queue building up behind grows faster than it takes to call a recovery truck. The expensive part is not the breakdown: it is what happens behind the breakdown while nobody has seen it. The alert usually comes from another driver, and it comes when there are already three kilometres of queue.
You decide once
The organisation decides once which surfaces admit no stopped vehicle and how many seconds count as «stopped» on each: the hard shoulder of a motorway is not the lane at a gate, nor the crossing outside a school. It also decides the hours, the exceptions — the maintenance vehicle that works there — and who receives the alert. IRIS checks it on all cameras at once, including the ones nobody looks at today.
Everything watched in a control room reacts to movement: something enters, something crosses, something moves. A breakdown is exactly the opposite. It is a still thing in a place where everything else moves, and that is why it catches nobody’s eye. A car stopped on the hard shoulder looks like part of the landscape, and ten minutes later it looks even more so.
The same scene shows up in places that are not a motorway. A white van has been standing for eight minutes in the gate lane of a restricted site, barrier up and nobody inside. A car is parked on top of the crossing outside a school, two metres from the sign, exactly as the children arrive. On level -3 of a car park, at four in the morning, a car sits in the aisle in front of the lifts, on a floor that should be closed and empty at that hour. And there is a road running along the wall of a prison, where a vehicle standing too long means something else entirely.
In all these cases IRIS does the same thing: it checks that an area meant to be clear is clear, and when it stops being clear it says from which minute. It does not know why the vehicle is stopped, and that is the question answered by the person who opens the camera. What changes is that they open it after four minutes instead of when the driver behind calls in.
What changes
Breakdowns used to arrive by phone, almost always from another car, with a description that was hard to use: «a car stopped just before the exit, I think». Somebody had to work out which camera that was.
Now it arrives with the location, the camera open and how many minutes it has been there. Whoever picks it up does not lose the first quarter of an hour finding the spot: they decide at once whether to send a patrol or a sign message.
Where we have seen it
CAM-178A car caught in the water
«Tell me the moment there is a vehicle stopped in the water, and tell me exactly where it is.»
CAM-472A car stopped outside a bay on a floor that should be empty
«Alert me if there is anyone or any car stopped on the closed levels outside opening hours.»
CAM-109A car parked too long against the wall
«Tell me if a vehicle stays parked against the wall for longer than we have set, or if someone stays put against the fence, and tell me which point of the perimeter it is.»
CAM-426The pile is growing on the wrong side of the fence
«Alert me if anyone unloads material outside the site, on the verge or against the fence, in or out of opening hours.»
CAM-62Breakdown on the hard shoulder
«Tell me if someone gets out of their car on the hard shoulder and stands next to the traffic.»
CAM-560The gate has been blocked by a stopped vehicle for eight minutes
«Tell me if a vehicle stands still for more than three minutes in the gate lane.»
CAM-142A car stopped on the crossing
«Tell me if a car is stopped on the crossing by the gate, and how long it has been there.»
CAM-568How many cars drive up the hill, and how many park on the verge
«Tell me if there are more than twenty cars parked on the verge.»
What it does not do
IRIS does not know why the vehicle is stopped. It does not tell a breakdown from a phone stop or from a service vehicle working there; exceptions are written into the rule by zone and time band.
Nor does it call the recovery truck or close a lane. It says something is standing still where nothing should be, since which minute and at which point. The rest is decided and done by a person.
Questions
- Does it tell a breakdown from an ordinary stop?
- No, and it does not need to. What the rule is asked to do is simpler: make sure no vehicle stays still in a place where none should be. It does not matter whether it is a breakdown, a phone call or a stop to drop someone off; on a motorway shoulder, in a gate lane or on top of a crossing, none of the three should be happening. The reason is seen by the person who opens the camera.
- How long does it have to be stopped before it alerts?
- You decide, which is why there is no single number. In a busy gate lane, three minutes is already a problem. On a motorway shoulder you want to know almost immediately, because the risk is somebody getting out of the car. Outside a school at arrival time, one minute on top of the crossing is one too many. It is written once per zone and per time band, and from then on it applies itself.
- Does it work inside a tunnel or a car park?
- Yes, and it usually works better than outdoors. In a tunnel or on a parking level the light is always the same, there is no low sun and no rain, and the framing never changes. They are also places where a stopped vehicle matters far more: in a tunnel because there is no way round it, and on a closed level at night because nothing should be there at all. The rule is the same; the minutes and the hours change.
- What about maintenance vehicles that work there?
- They raise an alert like anyone else, unless the rule says otherwise, and that is a decision worth taking slowly. You can exclude a zone within a time band, or keep the alert but mark it as expected so it does not sound. What we do not recommend is switching it off entirely «because there is always someone working there»: the day the stopped vehicle is not the maintenance one, that camera will be off out of habit.
The real interface, step by step
A camera looks. IRIS understands what it sees.
An extract of the real screen, no voice-over and hands-free. Each round poses another situation. What sits behind it is a good deal bigger than what you see.
- It lands in the tray
- You open it
- You confirm or dismiss
Not seeing yours here?
These words are the ones we have built, not the ones IRIS understands. The list falls short on purpose: you ask for it in a sentence, and sentences do not run out. Tell us what is in front of your cameras and we will tell you whether it understands it, or not yet.
And the best part
No building work, no trenches, no new cabling:the cameras are already up and already looking.
What changes is what happens to the picture. It used to be stored and never seen; now it is understood while it happens, on the same equipment you bought years ago.
Tell us your problem and we will say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
We reply the same working day.