The National Freeway Bureau yesterday said that it is soon to use data gathered through the electronic toll collection (ETC) system to help it forecast traffic on freeway sections prone to accidents and to enforce road maintenance work more efficiently.
Bureau Deputy Director-General Wu Mu-fu (吳木富) said that eTags, a device that allows drivers to pay their toll fees when driving on freeways, are now installed in more than 6 million vehicles nationwide, accounting for about 80 percent of all vehicles.
More than 14 million transactions are recorded by ETC gantries each day, he added.
Wu said that data analysis would enable the bureau to better understand the driving habits of freeway users and the types of traffic violations they commit.
“We would also look at weather information, the layout of routes and traffic reports. By combining such data, we would be able to forecast more accurately when and where traffic accidents might occur,” he said.
The National Highway Police Bureau often attributes the cause of an accident to a single factor, Wu said, adding that accidents could happen due to multiple reasons, including a vehicle’s condition, driving habits of freeway users and other external factors.
Identifying potential risk factors would help law enforcement to take preventative measures to reduce the occurrence of traffic accidents, he said.
As an example, Wu said that if certain freeway sections are found to have a high rate of collisions on rainy days, the highway police would be able to warn drivers in advance before they drive through such sections.
Police could increase patrols in such sections to lower the probability of accidents, he added.
Wu said that the ETC gantries record the number of vehicles that pass such checkpoints, as well as the time and traffic lanes cars are in, adding that data analysis would enable the bureau to assess traffic volume in each section as well as the percentage of large motor vehicles at different times of the day.
“This information would let us know the road sections that are more frequently used than others, and our road maintenance staff could begin work on road surfaces in such sections after inspection,” he said.
Drivers would also be able to upload information on freeway surfaces through the bureau’s mobile application, Wu said, adding that the bureau is considering allowing people who share information via the app a discount on toll fees.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS