New traffic monitoring system on Zwickauer Straße - Goethestraße junction
For several years now, the police have been recording an increasing number of accidents at the busy junction of Zwickauer Straße / Barbarossastraße / Goethestraße, which can be attributed to speeding or driving through the junction when the signal is red. In 2012, 23 accidents, in 2013 also 23 accidents and in 2014 nine accidents with one fatality and three serious injuries were recorded there by the police. There are also an unspecified number of other accidents that were not recorded by the police.
People often drive fast at traffic lights just as the yellow phase begins. This traffic behaviour increases the potential danger at traffic light junctions that are already accident-prone. This traffic junction could not be monitored with the tried-and-tested measurement technology used in Chemnitz.
The new measuring device from Vitronic, which is being put into operation today at the Zwickauer Straße - Goethestraße junction, is based on the Lidar measuring principle (Light Detection and Ranging), i.e. on the emission of a fan of laser beams. The measuring system calculates the position data of all vehicles in the laser fan from the time of flight and the angular coordinates of the light pulses. Carried out at a high repetition rate, this laser time-of-flight measurement makes it possible to calculate the path and speed of a vehicle very precisely and also to differentiate between cars and lorries. All measurements are carried out with protection class 1 lasers in the infrared range without any disturbance to road users. The scanner can be flexibly aligned and does not require any lane installations.
The system allows the speed of all vehicles to be measured across several lanes and reliably detects and determines the exact time at which the stop line is crossed on red, even in heavy traffic. The total cost of this measuring system is 115,000 euros.
This means that a total of nine speed measurement systems and ten red light monitoring systems have now been installed in the city of Chemnitz.