Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT) is a safety program that is focused on ‘aggressive’ driver behaviors that take place in the ‘shared use’ car/truck operating environment. While ‘obvious’ violations (e.g., following to close, erratic lane change behavior, etc.) can be detected by direct visual observation, uniformed enforcement personnel are unable to provide continuous wide spread visual surveillance of the entire traffic stream moving through a corridor.
NCSHP and ITRE have experimented with automated video detection of aggressive behaviors, with an emphasis on speed and following too close. Cameras capture the number of trucks and cars per hour and per lane in continuous 8 hour observation periods.
Mean truck and car speeds are aggregated by lane in 30-minute bins. Frequencies of follow-too-close (FTC) events by truck and by car, and by lane are generated and graphic comparisons of critical TACT behaviors (e.g., FTC) are conducted by vehicle type and lane for successive 30-minute periods.
The goal is to collect quantitative data to determine whether traditional enforcement methods combined with media and public education efforts are actually generating measurable changes in driver behavior on designated enforcement corridors (i.e. a lower rate of vehicles following too close or a lower rate of erratic lane changing).