SAFELANE · An all-encompassing, intelligent safety and asset management system for highway maintenance

Road maintenance is one of the most dangerous occupations in Europe. Despite stringent health & safety standards over 50% of UK road workers reported a near miss with a vehicle and the large majority of injuries or fatalities occur within designated safety areas. These safe zones are either protected by positive protection systems such as concrete barriers or soft barriers such as traffic cones. The latter are mainly used for temporary works. In such a scenario cones may be the only protection a road worker has from traffic. Due to the maturity of Europe’s road network and the rapid deterioration as a result of heavy traffic and weather conditions, temporary road work is increasing. In addition to concerns about safety, preparation of these temporary barriers is a major drain on resources. As a lot of roadwork is carried out at night, barriers are equipped with lanterns. These are typically powered by disposable batteries which only last a short period of time and have to be changed frequently. The Safelane consortium have successfully developed a wireless perimeter protection system that detects an impact to a temporary barrier. However, there are several significant technical hurdles that currently prevent the development of a system that can be applied to every road maintenance scenario. In Safelane we propose to develop an all-encompassing system including; a Smart re-chargeable lantern battery with integrated wireless impact sensor; a Smart alarm base station capable of receiving alerts from individual impact sensors, to warn the workforce; and a device management system enabling road maintenance contractors to effectively manage temporary work sites via a web based graphical user interface. The new Safelane system will therefore help provide early warning of temporary road work barrier breaches and will eliminate the need for manual changing of lantern batteries, reducing battery disposal by over 90%.