BlipTrack™ measures resting time for trucks on Ulstrup Øst highway service area

BlipTrack™ sensors are gathering information on truck drivers resting time on Danish highway in southern Jutland. The goal is to provide information on the trucks usage of the area - and to provide better service for the drivers.  

In this case the costumer, Vejdirektoratet, wanted information about truck drivers’ behaviour when resting at Ulstrup Rest - which is a highway service area. The costumer wanted to know when the trucks came in for a rest, and how long they stayed – in order to be able to plan better service facilities for the drivers. The challenge was to detect the trucks from the overall traffic flow. Furthermore we needed to separate the short stops from the longer rests. 

For this task we choose a solution based on three BlipTrack™ Traffic sensors. Two of these were placed just north and south of the resting area, while a third sensor was placed further south of the area. A filtering algorithm eliminated short stops, fast driving vehicles and the odd turnoff of Bluetooth signals between the sensors. 

Clear results from one week’s data 

The two southernmost BlipTrack™ sensors that were used for speed measurement gave a significant detection of the trucks - since their speed was very stable around 85km/h. Thats just a little more than the Danish speed limit for trucks on motorways which is 80km/h. 

The two sensors surrounding the resting area gave a clear picture on the resting time for these vehicles, of which most of them was deemed to be trucks. The resting time was between 9 and 11½ hours - and the typical arrival time for a truck doing a longer rest was between 17:00 and 20:00 (5:00 PM and 8:00 PM).  

Since this was the first survey of this kind based on Bluetooth measurements, the customer made a manual measurement to control the figures. This control confirmed that the BlipTrack™ Bluetooth measurement was correct.