Radio Frequency Identification in Supporting Traffic Safety

Due to the increased demands of traffic safety applicationsmany parameters of the traffic flow have to be measured bydifferent kind of techniques. The sensors of vehicle sensing anddetection are to be inexpensive, currently available and easy todeploy. Therefore, the state-of-the-art safety applications areusually based on mature technologies, such as video cameras,smart dust sensors, and wireless communication technologies.This paper discusses the application of RFID technology fortransportation applications. RFID is widely used for differentpurposes (e.g. cargo logistics, storage management), but isstill considered as new technology in the field of safety-relatedapplications.The paper gives an overview about the technology anddescribes scenarios of using RFID as infrastructure as well asvehicle sensor. The capabilities and limitations of RFID technologyis demonstrated through the ghost driver (wrong waydriving) detection, which is discussed in detail. In this particularapplication RFID is used as an infrastructure sensor, multiplereaders are connected in a network, thus able to monitorthe traffic flow directions in a particular road segment (e.g.in a motorway junction). Additional applications, such as flowclassification, road toll control and emergency monitoring arealso discussed in the paper.