Deer mating season can be deadly for drivers. Solar powered roadsigns may help.
Popular Science ·
Virginia's year-long pilot program reduced speed and involved over 10,000 vehicles. The post Deer mating season can be deadly for drivers. Solar powered roadsigns may help. appeared first on Popular Science .
Fall is here, and with it comes very determined deer . Mating season for the hoofed ruminants typically begins once temperatures dive and the days grow shorter, but the annual event also poses problems for humans. The deer have one thing on their mind, which means they pay even less attention to vehicles and roadways. In New Jersey, roughly 41 percent of all annual animal collisions occur between October and December, while the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety routinely tallies over 275 fatalities from similar accidents nationwide every year.
Driving gets even riskier in rural areas, which frequently host higher deer populations and much darker roads. However, a recent pilot program in Virginia offers a promising tool that may keep commuters safe while also allowing the animals to do their thing. At the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), researchers designed an automated digital roadside sensor system that warns drivers of large jaywalkers like deer and elk.
According to VTTI engineer Shreyas Bhat , the year-long trial demonstrated a “measurable change” in how local drivers responded when alerted to oncoming wildlife. Bhat and his colleagues tested the system with help from the state’s Department of Transportation along a 14-mile section of Route 460 in southwest Virginia. The array was composed of eight portable, solar-powered trailers and customizable digital message signs. Each station included thermal cameras analyzed by onboard machine learning software, which triggered the sign alerts whenever it flagged nearby medium– to large–sized animals.
Over the course of the trial, researchers amassed driving data on over 10,000 vehicles, while the detection system maintained an estimated accuracy of around 97 percent. This is particularly impressive given the region’s environmental and infrastructural challenges.
“This system is unique because of the requirements of the area—it needed to be solar powered, portable, and be able to withstand all weather conditions,” explained VTTI engineer Jean Paul Talledo Vilela .
The team reported an average reduced speed of about three miles per hour thanks to the roadside warning signs. That may not seem like much, but even a slight slowdown can save lives. It also proved people took note of the system.
“Speed is an important data point to understand if drivers were actually paying attention to the message board,” said Talledo Vilela. “Even if they are not braking aggressively, some reduction in speed indicates that they may be paying more attention to their surroundings because they got that alert.”
While Talledo Vilela, Bhat, and their collaborators are still parsing through data from the program,(it ended in September) the initial findings remain promising. From here, the team hopes to refine the overall system while organizing future trials in other regions of the country. If successful, the relatively simple installations could also be adapted for other year-round road safety situations like construction or real-time weather hazards.
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