Assessing the Interstate Coverage of Commercial Trucks Capable of Providing Roadway Imagery via On-Vehicle Dash Camera in the United States

Abstract

Commercial trucks travel over three hundred billion miles annually in the United States. Approximately 64,000 of these commercial trucks have the capability to share on-vehicle dashboard camera images sourced from a third-party data provider. Images can only be retrieved in specific areas where trucks are travelling over 10 kmph speed at approximately 1 Hz. Such imagery can provide agencies with an agile framework for the monitoring, assessment, and inspection of roadways. The roadways traversed and trip frequency of these trucks is crucial for agency wide adoption. The purpose of this study is to assess the coverage of these trucks on national interstates using a sample 6-week period from April 22 to June 2, 2024, with approximately 375 million trip segments. Approximately 30,000 unique trucks were available across the country during peak hours. The number of trucks with these capabilities ranges from 72 to 536 per week on Indiana interstates. At least one truck was observed during daytime for 56% of the Indiana interstate miles and during nighttime for 35% of the interstate miles every day. When evaluated over a week, the percentage interstate miles covered increased to 100% and 92% during daytime and nighttime, respectively. Similar statistics for interstate I-70, passing through ten states and spanning 4,358 directional miles were presented to illustrate opportunities for nationwide scalability. This type of coverage statistics enables public agencies to use these capabilities for diverse use cases such as work zones, pavement condition, roadside infrastructure, and winter weather road condition monitoring.

Keywords

• Commercial trucks
• roadway imagery
• big data
• agile monitoring
• intelligent transportation systems