Highways: boosting safety and efficiency with wireless comms

Keeping Britain moving is not without its challenges. Congestion, accidents and weather can conspire to bring our roads to a standstill. Then there’s the way that our winters conjure up portholes by the dozen. To make matters worse, ensuing that our roads are safe and serviceable is perhaps not for the faint-hearted due to the need to occasionally work close to tonnes of metal travelling at 50 miles an hour (and often more in those areas where motorists tend to ignore temporary speed limits) – in the past 10 years, 14 service provider workers and two Highways England traffic officers have been killed while working on motorways and major A roads in England. In some cases, insult is literally added to injury – the Highways Term Maintenance Association recorded 347 incidents of abuse from motorist over a 20-month period, of which three-quarters were in the form of verbal abuse, while the remainder involved physical violence.