ICT Devices: Vital Tools for Enhancing Road Traffic Monitoring

Abstract

Road Traffic monitoring involves the collection of data describing the characteristic of vehicles and their movement through road networks. Such data may be used for one of these purposes such as law enforcement, congestion and incident detection and increasing road capacity. Transportation is a requirement for every nation regardless of its economy, political stability, population size and technological development. Movement of goods and people from one place to another is crucial to maintain strong economic and political ties between the various components of any given nation among nations. However, there are different modes of transportation and the most paramount one to human beings is road transportation. Due to increase in the modes of transportation, road users encounter different problems such as road blockage and incidents. Therefore there is need to monitor users incidents and to know the causes. Road traffic monitoring can be done manually or using ICT devices. This paper focuses on how the use of ICT devices can enhance road traffic monitoring. It traces the brief history of transportation; it equally discussed road traffic and safety, tools for monitoring road traffic, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) use for traffic monitoring and their benefits. The result shows that the use of ICT devices in road traffic monitoring should be a Millennium Goal for all developed and developing countries because of its numerous advantages in the reduction of the intensity of traffic and other road incidents.