9 March 2012

Dealing with serious road accidents could be speeded up significantly following a decision by the Department of Transport to fund the purchase of advanced laser scanning equipment for gathering information from crash sites. One of the benefits should be that roads won’t have to stay closed for so long after an accident happens.

Under the project, 27 English police forces will be provided with 3D laser scanners from 3D Laser Mapping. These are said to be capable of collecting highly detailed 3D images of crash sites up to 50 per cent faster than traditional survey techniques.

Similar scanners are already used to analyse motorway accidents, and reportedly can collect data quickly enough to allow roads to be reopened within 90 minutes of the incident.

In tests of the latest RIEGL VZ-400 scanner in the London area, it was found to gather 30 per cent more data than conventional pulse scanners in less than half the time.

The device uses unique echo digitisation and online waveform analysis to achieve superior performance and accuracy of measurement, even under adverse weather conditions.

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