A Needs Assessment and Technology Evaluation for Roadside Identification of Commercial Vehicles

Abstract

Throughout North America, selected public agencies have been assigned the responsibility for monitoring commercial vehicle traffic to make sure the commercial vehicles operating on public roadways are in safe operating condition, have proper registration and operating authority, are within legal size and weight limits, and have paid all appropriate fees and taxes. To accomplish this goal, all 50 States have established roadside monitoring and enforcement programs. With limited resources and increasingly heavy truck volumes, roadside enforcement officers must continually make decisions about which trucks to check and which to allow to proceed. This process of selecting some trucks for closer scrutiny, while allowing others to proceed unimpeded, is called “screening”. The Roadside Identification Feasibility Study was undertaken to identify methods of unique identification of commercial vehicles at the roadside for slow and high-speed electronic screening purposes. It was designed to be a comprehensive look at the technologies, focused on the needs of the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Motor Carrier and Highway Safety (OMCHS) and the States.