TRIMARC Intelligent Transport System Wins 2003 National Road Safety Award

TOKYO--Dec. 1, 20037, 2003--The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration has announced that TRIMARC (Traffic Response and Incident Management Assisting the River Cities), an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) jointly administered by the Kentucky State Transportation Cabinet and the Indiana State Department of Transportation, is to receive a prestigious National Highway Safety Award.

TRIMARC, which employs an Auto Incident Recording System (AIRS) produced and developed by Mitsubishi Electric, was commended for reducing the accident rate at a traffic intersection by 50 percent.

With a high degree of precision, AIRS is able to record the conditions before and after an accident or near miss has occurred. In July 2001, the Kentucky State Transportation Cabinet became the first state-level transportation authority in the United States to install such a system.

Award Background

The Auto Incident Recording System (AIRS) in Louisville, Kentucky is located in a busy commercial district at the junction of Brook Street and Jefferson Street. The frequency of accidents and near misses at the intersection used to be extremely high, with approximately 32,000 vehicles passing through every day.

Mitsubishi Electric's sales partner, Northrop Grumman, in cooperation with local police and public service agencies, handles the analysis of the data collected by the system, which is operated as a part of TRIMARC.

Results of recordings taken at the junction of Brook Street and Jefferson Street revealed that drivers making illegal left turns caused 50 percent of the collisions and 33 percent of the near misses. In response to these findings, measures taken to erect new signs subsequently led to a 50 percent reduction in the number of accidents, for which TRIMARC and AIRS were highly commended by the Federal Highway Administration.

Award Summary

TRIMARC was one of 13 (out of 130) projects which received an award from the Roadway Safety Foundation and the Federal Highway Administration for improvements made to the design, management and general plan of the intersection, and for its role in the prevention of road deaths. This success follows TRIMARC's winning a "Best of ITS" award at the 2002 Intelligent Transportation Society (ITS) of America conference in Long Beach, California.

The Next Step

Mitsubishi Electric is extremely proud of AIRS' demonstrated ability to reduce accident rates, and is looking forward to promoting this highly commended system around the world.

System description

An AIRS installation consists of a camera, an audio receiver and a control box located at an intersection where the frequency of accidents is high. The audio receiver is capable of detecting sounds, such as the squeal of brakes, when an accident or near miss occurs, as well as being able to determine the strength, frequency and shape of radio waves. When an accident or near miss occurs, an audiovisual recording of the pre and post-event scene is saved in the control boxes' internal memory and automatically transmitted to a VTR unit. AIRS was developed with the intention of making a significant contribution to reducing accident rates and improving the conditions at intersections where accidents occur frequently.

About Mitsubishi Electric

With over 80 years of experience in providing reliable, high-quality products to both corporate clients and general consumers all over the world, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation is a recognized world leader in the manufacture, marketing and sales of electrical and electronic equipment used in information processing and communications, space development and satellite communications, consumer electronics, industrial technology, energy, transportation and building equipment. The company has operations in 35 countries and recorded consolidated group sales of 3,639 billion yen (US$30.3 billion*) in the year ended March 31, 2003.

For more information visit http://global.mitsubishielectric.com

*At an exchange rate of 120 yen to the US dollar, the rate given by the Tokyo Foreign Exchange Market on March 31, 2003.