Blog

Randy Hanson, IRD’s Executive VP & COO, made a presentation at the ITS World Congress being held in Montreal, Canada. The session was focused on the implementation of Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) systems for direct enforcement.

Direct enforcement means that overweight vehicles are fined based directly on the WIM measurement without a secondary measurement from a static scale. An automated direct enforcement system would ideally be able to fine every overweight commercial vehicle at the busiest weigh stations – even the vehicles that drive past at full speed and are not directed to report for inspection. Direct enforcement could also be a valuable addition to existing virtual weigh station systems.

The Special Interest Session at ITS World Congress was focused on exploring how close WIM is to providing the accuracy and confidence to provide the basis for direct enforcement. What is the status quo? How would the legal framework look? What new technology is being developed to bring us closer to successful implementation of WIM for direct enforcement?

At today's session, Randy reviewed the existing options for improving WIM accuracy and the new approaches being developed. IRD’s VectorSense™ tire sensor suite, in particular, has great potential to achieve improvements in WIM accuracy by providing lane position information. By measuring the tire position on each sensor or scale, the WIM measurement can be adjusted to reduce sensitivity errors. The reduction in false positives with this new technology brings us a step closer to reliable direct enforcement.

Download the full presentation: